This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter. The return of the two disciples from Emmaus returns the focus to Jerusalem which is the “center” of the Luke-Acts narrative. In the gospel all roads lead to Jerusalem. In Acts all roads lead from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Upon their return they find “the eleven and those with them. The travelers are greeted with the news abuzz in the room: The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!”Continue reading →
This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter In Lectionary Cycle B, in which Mark in the primary gospel. The reading for the 2nd Sunday of Easter was taken from the Gospel of John and recounts the Upper Room scenes of Jesus’ appearances and the story of Thomas. On this the 3rd Sunday of Easter, the lectionary again looks to another gospel account to tell the story of the appearance in the Upper Room. This pericope is taken from the Gospel of Luke.
In the Lucan recounting of the events of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, our story occurs on the evening of Easter Sunday. The women have found the tomb empty, there have been encounters with the Resurrected Jesus, and the news is spreading among the small group of faithful. But not all have heard – not the two disciples on the “Road to Emmaus” (24:17)
The first verse of our reading more traditionally belongs to the Emmaus road story when two disciples encounter the Risen Jesus(Lk 24:13-35). That reading is from the 2nd Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle C. Let us pick up the ending of that story:
30 And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. 31 With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. 32 Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning (within us) while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” 33 So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them 34 who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Brian Stoffregen provides good reason to review the “Road to Emmaus” account as he points out the parallels between the back-to-back Lucan accounts. Each in its own way is a story of the growth in faith as the disciples experience:
Now the two have made the long trek back to Jerusalem, found the community gathered in the upper room, and shared their encounter. While they were still speaking about this, [Jesus] stood in their midst.”
One of the emphases of the “Road to Emmaus” account was to emphasize the reality of Jesus’ spiritual presence in the church in the Word proclaimed and in the “breaking of the bread.” Now Luke moves the emphasis to the physical reality of Jesus’ resurrection body. Jerome Kodell [Luke, 979] notes: “From the earliest times in the church, there was a danger of docetism, the heretical belief that Jesus was God behind a thin veneer of humanity: thus his suffering was only playacting, and his resurrection was simply a return to a completely spiritual existence with no bodily effect. The Letters of John combated this error (1 John 4:2–3; 2 John 7).” And so Luke stresses that Jesus’ resurrection body is real and not simply a resuscitated corpse. The disciples touch him; the marks of the passion are visible in his hands and feet; he eats with the disciples – far more than simply appearing among them.
It is good to remember that Luke’s primary audience are people raised in Hellenistic thought. The evangelist is offering a whole new category of thought, beyond any previous perspective.
Image credit: Maesta altar piece, Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1308, Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena | Public Domain
In response, Jesus told Thomas, Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Thomas came to believe because he saw the risen Lord, but Jesus did not praise Thomas’ pathway to faith; rather, he pronounced a blessing upon those who have not seen the risen Jesus yet have believed in him nevertheless. These are those who hear or read the witness to Jesus borne by the disciples and confirmed by the Spirit (15:26–27). This is the second pronunciation of blessing by Jesus in the form of a beatitude in the Fourth Gospel (cf. 13:17: “If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it.”) Continue reading →
This coming Sunday is the 2nd Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. The gospel is taken from John 20:19-31, the scene in the Upper Room on the evening of the Resurrection. In today’s post we briefly consider: “…do not be unbelieving, but believe” as we consider the verses popularly knows as the “Doubting Thomas verses” Continue reading →
This coming Sunday is the 2nd Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. The gospel is taken from John 20:19-31, the scene in the Upper Room on the evening of the Resurrection. In today’s post we briefly consider: 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. 23 Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”Continue reading →
This coming Sunday is the 2nd Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. The gospel is taken from John 20:19-31, the scene in the Upper Room on the evening of the Resurrection. In today’s post we consider the phrase, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”The Fourth Gospel often speaks of Jesus being sent into the world by the Father: to do his will (6:38–39; 8:29), to speak his words (3:34; 8:28; 12:49; 14:24; 17:8), to perform his works (4:34; 5:36; 9:4) and win salvation for all who believe (3:16–17). Continue reading →
This coming Sunday is the 2nd Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. The gospel is taken from John 20:19-31, the scene in the Upper Room on the evening of the Resurrection. Our gospel contains the second and third appearances of the risen Jesus in John’s gospel. These three appearances take place in Jerusalem. There is a fourth and final appearance of Jesus later in a section referred to as the “Epilogue” of John. This appearance is at the “Sea of Tiberias” in Galilee (John 21). Continue reading →
This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday in Easter, Year B. You can read an complete commentary on the reading here:
35 Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. 36 While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37 But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? 39 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.” 40 And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
41 While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of baked fish; 43 he took it and ate it in front of them. 44 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.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. 46 And he said to them, “Thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day 47 and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And (behold) I am sending the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Continue reading →
“Receive the holy Spirit” The sacred writer had already introduced the giving of the Holy Spirit in John 7 in a scene during the Feast of Tabernacles in which the Spirit is promised at a future time when Jesus was glorified. In the Fourth Gospel it is at the crucifixion that Jesus is glorified in that his willing obedience manifests the nature of God, which is love. It is there on the cross that Jesus deliver the Spirit into the world (19:30), symbolized immediately afterward by the flow of the sacramental symbols of blood and water. Continue reading →
Commentary. Meanwhile the disciples, still reeling from the events of the last three days, gather in the upper room. In Matthew 28:8, Mary Magdalene’s reaction to the encounter with Jesus was “fearful but overjoyed.” Perhaps this too is the experience of the disciples. All John tells us is that they were gathered together, hiding as it were, for fear of the Jews (v.19)
These are the disciples who scattered and fled at Jesus’ arrest, who stood at a distance from the cross, and in the case of Peter denied Jesus. These are disciples that upon seeing Jesus appear within the room would have likely experienced shame as they remembered all they had done and failed to do. Yet Jesus’ words are not words of recrimination or blame, his first resurrected words to the disciples as a group is “Peace be with you.” Continue reading →
This coming Sunday is the 
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