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. 

PEOPLE OF RESURRECTION - PROCLAMATION

Thursday of the Easter week

April 4, 2024 : Acts 3: 11-26; Luke 24: 35-48

The Word today continues from where it left us yesterday: to think of our identity as people of Resurrection as people who give, who give above all the Lord to the world. This is the identity that is deepened today with the Word - to be the Proclamation. 

Proclamation can be announcing, sharing and becoming what we have to give to the other! It is announcing in as much as we let others know what we possess - the Lord. It becomes sharing when we get closer to persons and share our experience with the Lord that it becomes their experience too. At a deeper level, we become what we possess, that is we become more and more like the Lord whom we wish to proclaim, thus becoming a proclamation ourselves. This is the progressive identity of the People of Resurrection. However, there are some inevitable requirements, if these roles need to be fulfilled. 

First, we cannot announce if we do not know! To know the Lord, to recognise the Lord and to acknowledge the Lord in one's life is the primary requirement for an efficient proclamation of the Lord. The Emmaus disciples are equipped with that recognition to go back and announce!

Secondly, we cannot share, if we do not have! To share the experience of the Lord, one needs to have had that experience. One cannot fake that experience, it will be seen through and it would be a total farce. Real experiences are not described, they are shared. That is why, the experience with the Lord cannot be spoken about, but it has to be shared, that the other begins to as well feel the same experience. The disciples after the Resurrection, possessed the Lord that everytime they shared their experience, people were struck by it... they shared the experience that was being shared - that is true proclamation. 

Thirdly, the proclamation is not complete until we become what we proclaim. Jesus invites his disciples to that... to become his witnesses, not in words and not even in works, but in their lives. He wishes them to become witnesses of the Reign, that can spread the goodnews of God's salvation to the ends of the earth.