PEOPLE OF RESURRECTION - SPIRITUAL COURAGE

Friday of the Easter week

April 5, 2024 - Acts 4: 1-12; John 21: 1-14

The Word these days is continuously speaking to us about the characteristics of the people of Resurrection - today we have an undeniable trait to reflect on: Courage. It should not be understood merely as a human valour or a daring spirit. This has to be concevied a bit more profoundly than that - as Spiritual Courage, that we see evidenced in the readings today. 

We come across the disciples, who stand up and speak up, for their mission as announcers, proclaimers of the message left behind by their master and only Saviour, Jesus Christ. They were not always so, we know that very well. They were transformed after the Resurrection and specially after the coming of the Holy Spirit. That is why we can call this Spiritual Courage, not in the sense of contrasting it with a material courage, but to indicate the origin, that this courage came from the Spirit. 

Symbolically, we could find a representaton of the levels of this courage in the Gospel: the first level which can be seen in the act of throwing the net out to starboard even though they did not know who it was that was directing them to do it; the second level is knowing who it is, the fact of knowing the Lord - "it is the Lord" said the beloved disciple; the third level is that which establishes that it is not enough to know, one has to throw oneself into faith, in total enchantment for the Lord, as Peter did - throwing himself and going towards the Lord. 

That  can happen only from the courage that the Spirit gives a spiritual, a Spiritual courage that consists of listening to the Lord even in the most diffilcult of times, of recognising the Lord close and standing in the midst of our lives, and of choosing to reach out and respond to the call of the Risen, thus becoming ourselves the most intimate proclamation of the Lord.