PEOPLE OF RESURRECTION - RECOGNISING AND REALISING

The Tuesday of the Easter Week

April 2, 2024: Acts 2: 36-41; John 20: 11-18

Among the indications of the People of Resurrection, today we have the characteristic trait of recognising the Lord and realising His presence! "I have seen the Lord and he has spoken to me," affirms Mary of Magdala today, in terms so clear and sound. But it took time and effort for her to arrive at that statement, because it was not a statement from history books or from memorised formulae; it was an experience of recognition of the Risen Lord and a realisation of the Lord's presence. 

We see those phases of her recognition of the Lord - when her preoccupation of what "she wanted to do" was so high she was not even clear as to whom she was speaking to: she was all lost in searching for the Lord who was not there according to her; when her accusation, complaint and anger of the other about what they had done to them was so high, she was taking every one around her for someone who had wronged her: even the Lord looked like a stranger and a threat; finally when she listened to the Lord, her eyes were opened to recognise finally the Lord whom she had been seeing all this while - Rabbuni, she exclaimed! She recognised and realised that the Lord has all the time been with her.

The same is expressed by the people in the first reading. They were all the time given the grace of beholding what the Lord was and what the Lord wanted to reveal to them. But their eyes, their hearts and their lives were so filled with what they were occupied with, that they never managed to listen to what they were hearing. Finally, after all that took place with Jesus and then with the disciples, they open their ears and their minds, they listen and they Recognise the Word coming over to them. 

This Recognition is not just a matter of fact or a passing event... it leads to a realisation, a realisation that leads in turn to transformation. People of Resurrection, just as the women, the disciples and the apostles were, are people who recognise and realise, recognise the presence of the Lord and realise what the Lord is doing for them!