Gospel Reflections | Jesus stood in their midst (Lk 24:35-48) – My Daily Bread: A Reason2bCatholic blog

A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”
cf. Lk 6:45

third sunday of easter

by Reason2bCatholic

While the disciples gathered together to hear from two of them about their encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Jesus came to them and stood in their midst, and greeted them with a greeting of peace. Luke’s Gospel account tells us those present reacted with terror and were startled at the appearance of the Risen Lord.

Jesus invites us too, like the disciples in the Upper Room, to “touch and see” that we may come to believe.

Be not afraid! Jesus is waiting for you when you find nothing else in this world satisfies you.

For a reflection from Luke’s Gospel account please enjoy below.

Peace be with you!

Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.”
cf. Gospel of Luke 24:38-39

Gospel

LISTEN: Thus it was written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke 24:35-48

The two disciples recounted what had taken place on the way, and how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of bread.

While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them.

He said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said to them, “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

The Gospel of the Lord

REFLECTION

by Bishop Robert Barron

Friends, in today’s Gospel, the risen Jesus appears to his eleven disciples. He does not appear as a Platonic soul, a ghost, or a hallucination. Instead, he can be touched and seen, has flesh and bones, and can consume baked fish. Against all their expectations, a dead man had returned, through the power of God, bodily and objectively, from death.

Even while insisting on this bodiliness and objectivity, we must not go to the opposite extreme. It really was Jesus, the crucified, who had returned from the dead. But he did not come back simply resuscitated to the confines of ordinary space and time. He was not, in a word, like Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus, or the son of the widow of Naim, all people who had been raised only to die again.

Instead, Jesus’ body is transformed and transfigured, independent of the strictures of space and time; it is, in Paul’s language, a “spiritual” body. And the point is this: he has triumphed over death and all that pertains to death. His resurrected body is a foretaste and promise of what God intends for all of us.

Credit: Daily Lenten Gospel Reflections, Bishop Robert Barron, April 18, 2021; Word on Fire, https://www.wordonfire.org. 

Information herein posted under the "rules of fair use" to foster education and discussion in accordance with Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

SUNDAY SERMON: A VIDEO GOSPEL REFLECTION

Friends, Christ is risen from the dead, and heaven and earth have collided! Despite this grand, reorienting truth, our culture seems to miss the point of the Resurrection. The world tries to domesticate Easter, but this is impossible. There’s no other reaction than to accept the life-changing reality that Jesus of Nazareth rose bodily from the dead.”
Bishop Robert Barron

The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books, but that we should engrave them upon our hearts.”
Saint John Chrysostom