1. For the next several Sundays we will read the Gospel accounts of what happened among the friends and followers of Jesus in the days after he was put to death. They are extraordinary happenings by any standards. Jesus, whom they had seen dying on a cross and whose body they had placed in a tomb begins to appear to them as if it were the most natural thing in the world. All of a sudden he appears out of the blue, spends some time with them, and then just as suddenly and mysteriously he vanishes from their sight. On the one hand he seems to be no different at all from the person with whom they had spent so much time before his being put to death, on the other hand there seems to be something altogether unworldly about his comings and goings. Those who see him are alarmed, frightened, dumbfounded and confused by what is happening. In response to their fears Jesus does his best to put them at their ease – “Peace be with you” were often the first words he spoke to them when he appeared suddenly. And they needed to be reassured because they found it hard to believe what they were seeing and experiencing.

      “Not a word in Scripture suggests that the apostles ever expected a resurrection in any form; on the contrary they rejected the thought and were overwhelmed by the actual fact.” (Romano Guardini,

The Lord, Green and Co, London, 1956, p 406). There is no evidence in the Gospels to support the idea that the whole resurrection story was a pious attempt by the followers of Jesus to perpetuate the memory of the person whom they had revered and respected so much. Quite the opposite; they were confused, upset, and very reluctant to accept the reality of what was happening. Some of them thought they were seeing a ghost and Thomas, as we have read in today’s Gospel, refused outright to accept the word of those who told him – “We have seen the Lord.” He would have none of it.

2. Time and time again Jesus is at pains to assure them that it is really he himself in flesh and blood. Saint Luke, in one of his accounts of what happened, sums up the situation – “They were still talking about this when Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you!’ In a state of alarm and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he said, ‘Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have.’ And as he said this he showed them his hands and feet. Their joy was so great that they still could not believe it, and they stood there dumbfounded; so he said to them. ‘Have you anything here to eat? And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes.” (Luke 24: 35-45). No, indeed, the resurrection story is not just a beautiful legend, not just the memory of a great man living on in history. This is no mythological story where the boundaries between actual fact and the inner yearnings of the spirit are blurred and confused. This is concrete reality; this is what actually happened; this is what the friends and disciples of Jesus experienced in those days after his death. They may have been overawed, bewildered, doubtful and confused about it all, but if that was so, it was precisely because what was happening was for real. Their minds seemed to be telling them ‘this should not be happening’, but in fact it is happening and they cannot deny what they see and feel and hear.

      We should, of course, respect mythological stories for they do express the deeper longings and more profound aspirations of the human spirit. And there is no reason for us to say that God is not speaking to our minds and hearts through such stories and legends. But we should be clear that the resurrection is on another plane altogether. Here we are talking about Jesus being present once again with his friends and disciples and being present in flesh and blood. This is no make-believe presence.

      We should be grateful to Thomas for forcing the issue – “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Thomas has his feet on the ground; he won’t allow himself to be carried away into believing some extraordinary story. If he is going to believe, he wants to verify for himself the basis for his believing. Jesus respected him for that and did not refuse him the opportunity to test his doubt – “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.”

3. Christianity has always had a place for mystics and visionaries and always respected those who through meditation and contemplation try to gain access to the hidden life of God. But the heart of Christianity is elsewhere; it is firmly fixed on the humanity of Jesus for the simple reason that this is where God comes to meet us – in the person of Jesus. At the very end of today’s Gospel, John tells us that the purpose of all that he has written is, as he puts it, - “…, but these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

      All the things which the Gospel tells us happened during the days after the death of Jesus are to bring home to us the fact that Jesus lives on, not in some ghostly and unreal manner, but in all his humanity. By dying he has not lost anything of that human condition which was his by being born of Mary. This is the really extraordinary thing, that our humanity, in the person of Jesus, has now entered heaven and has now become part of the life of God forever. And we, because we share the same humanity with Jesus, we too have a right to enter heaven and share the life of God.

4. To see religion, then, as an escape from our humanity and from the hardships of our human condition, is the greatest mistake we can make. And that has been a constant temptation down through the ages, to want to flee from the limitations and shortcomings of our human condition; to take flight to some esoteric world where our spirits would soar beyond the burden of our flesh. In our own day that longing and temptation has gained new force and new vigour. Many have lived for so long in a world saturated with the material and physical aspects of our humanity, that they are now seeking to free themselves from what they have come to regard as fetters. But their escape is to a world of strange cults, new-age sects and vague superstitions, an insubstantial world, figments of fevered imaginations, a wholly fictitious world without any sure or solid foundation.

      In contrast to that, after his resurrection, Jesus repeatedly stressed that he had lost nothing of his humanity. He was still the same Jesus of Nazareth whom the disciples and friends had known during the years of his public ministry prior to his death. If anything, his life after death seems to be more mundane and down to earth than ever. All he does, apart from a few brief instructions to his disciples as to what they were to do, is to be with them, to talk, eat, walk the roadways with them. And it is there too that we must meet him, in the living of our daily lives. Nothing extraordinary! Except the realization that the risen Lord is with us too as we make our way through life.

QUOTATIONS

1. “Let us for a moment suppose that the Resurrection and the period afterwards had been only the offshoot of morbid religious experience, legend or myth – what would those days have looked like? Doubtless, they would have been filled with demonstrations of the liberated one’s power; the hunted one, now omnipotent, would have shattered his enemies; he would have blazed from temple altars, would have covered his followers with honours, and in these and other ways, have fulfilled the longings of the oppressed. He would also have initiated the disciples into the wonderful mysteries of heaven, would have revealed the future, the beginning and the end of all things. But nothing of this occurs. No mysteries are revealed; no one is initiated into the secrets of the unknown. Not one miracle, save that of Christ’s transfigured existence and the wonderful fish-catch, which is only a repetition of an earlier event. What does happen? Something completely unspectacular, exquisitely still; the past is confirmed, the reality of the life that has been crosses over into eternity. These days are the period of that transition.”

(Romano Guardini, ibid. pp 420/421)