Third Sunday of Easter B Lk 24,35-48

What is my relationship to faith? 
Reconsider your personal relationship to Jesus’ resurrection and subsequently to your life.

Have you ever explained things to someone as you see them, and the person who asked you to do so is not listening? It can be seen that the ideas are far away. Can he understand things? Can he know them if he doesn’t want to?
The son drank several times. When he sobered up, he always asked his father for forgiveness and promised to leave the alcohol. He asked his father to pray for him. Not only did the father promise, but he also prayed a lot for the son to change his life. The evening came again in a state of tension. Father cut wood in the morning. The son, already sober, came to his father, “Father, can I help you?” The father agrees. On the other hand, when the son grabs the saw and wants to pull it to him, the father does not allow it, holding it in his hand. The son jerks the saw several times, but the father holds it firmly. Then his son will say to him, “Father, but how can I help you cut the wood if you don’t let the saw go?”

Who among us counts the prayers, holy masses, communions, confessions, shop windows, and alms that we have sacrificed for the church! Is our faith so strong as appropriate?
Regarding the reaction to Jesus’ words after his resurrection, the evangelist St. Luke remarked: “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Lk 24:45).

After the resurrection, Jesus makes direct contact with the apostles; he has a body they can touch, on which they can see wounds from nails and spears, and since they are still amazed, he says, “Do you have anything to eat? here?” They handed him a piece of baked fish. And he took and ate before them (Luke 24:41). In this way, he wants to strengthen the faith of the disciples. His body is authentic, but he has new qualities. It is a glorified body. The Lord Jesus’s resurrection was not a return to life on earth, as was the case with those he raised from the dead. They did not have a glorified body. A young man from Naim, a friend of Lazarus or a daughter of Jair, had to die again. In Jesus’ case, we see the transition from death to a new life, eternal life. In this is seen the work of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus gives the disciples evidence of the goal of a person’s life that does not end in death. The prophets of the prophets, the words are written in Moses’s law, and the psalms’ words are fulfilled in Jesus (cf. Lk 24:44). We know that the testimony of two or three was the strongest argument among the Jews. Jesus thus points to a serious matter in our faith. His resurrection is a confirmation of the truth about his divinity that he was the real and true Son of God. By the resurrection, Jesus also opened the gate to a new life for us. Jesus introduces a condition that binds those who believe in him to be bound by the mission of “preaching repentance for the remission of sins” (Lk 24:48). And this activity is to manifest itself as Jesus himself defines: “You are witnesses of it” (Lk 24:48).
The liturgical texts of the whole Easter period up to the Feast of the Holy Spirit’s sending speak of the risen Christ’s meetings, especially with their disciples. There are unannounced and unusual meetings. During them, Jesus points out the meaning of what happened. He does this not only in words when he says “Peace be with you” (Lk 24:36); when he addresses them, “What frightens you and why your hearts take hold of such thoughts” (Lk 24:38), but also calls on the disciples, “Touch me and be persuaded” (Lk 24:39). These encounters have their gradation in the life of the apostles. At first, they are afraid, they are afraid, gradually they are convinced that Jesus is really among them because he ate baked fish. Finally, Peter speaks to the people: “You have denied the Saints and the Righteous and asked them to release the murderer. You killed the originator of life, but God raised him from the dead, and we are witnesses ”(Acts 3: 14-15).

Questions may arise: Why is it so important for the Risen One for disciples to be convinced that there is no spirit? Why does he express his bodily resurrection so concretely that he accepts food? The answer will be that we do not limit our faith to spiritual things, only to the historical Christ, and at the same time forget the meaning of his bodily resurrection.
After all, man’s basic duty is to look for the last goal of his life, and that is the risen Christ. It would be a fundamental mistake to stand superficially, irresponsibly, badly for its mission on earth.
Priest J. Cuda (in Biblioteka kaznodziejskej, no. 3-4 / 97, Poznaň, p. 141) talks about a mother who wrote a letter to her unbelieving children on Easter. The letter shows that he is happy to see them with their families for a short time. Children live far away and come to it only once a year. He continues: “I am waiting for this encounter with joy and pain. Although I hide it, I feel a great chasm between you and us, the parents, that separates us. I know you love us, you care about us, but our holiday reunion is not as alive as we brought you up: in the spirit of the Risen One. We go to church, and you stay home. Losing your faith hurts a lot. Can one lose faith as a girl loses her headscarf? You talk a lot about what you have to do. You say you care about the homeless in your job, those who are wronged. You are fighting the injustice and irrationality of others. Have you ever thought that there is Someone who can make the most of your sacrificial work? Sure, you see some sense in what you do, but how valuable is your activity to you? The hour of death will also give you. You know I was a nurse during the war. There was a tragedy in the field hospital where I worked. A certain mother sat by her only son’s bed day and night. He was wounded, and the situation was hopeless. The son was the meaning of her life. The day he died, his mother committed suicide. She was unbelieving. The meaning of her life died with her son. Did she have the right meaning of life? Doesn’t one have the duty to seek such a reasonable sense of existence, where death is not the “last word”?

The risen Jesus teaches us to accept theoretically and daily life that life does not end with death. We believe that the soul does not die. We believe that the time will come for our mortal body when it will rise to a new life. We believe that we are invited by Jesus himself to live in his Kingdom with the glorified body.
Funeral workers can prepare a dead body for burial for a reasonable fee in such a way that it appears to be alive. They do not save on different powders, colors, and fragrances. They want to make the bereaved a funeral farewell to the bereaved. They do not smell decomposing bodies. Not to see a dead white. When they pay, they also make a new haircut for the dead woman.
Christ was also dead. However, he did not need the service of women on Sunday at dawn. He rose from the dead. He kept on his body the signs of the torture made by human anger. Why maybe? We can assume that when we meet him as our Judge to look at his hands, hips, heads, we will see the greatness of his love and the greatness of our sin. “God is love” (1 Jn 4: 8). It is right that we use the Easter time not only for a personal meeting with the Eucharistic Christ in the church at Holy Mass, but also in everyday meetings with our loved ones, but also with unknown people, that we see the risen Christ in them not only in the soul but also in the body. It is up to us whether we will deceive ourselves and others and whether we will fight for our souls’ salvation for a new life in a glorified body with all the malice of the body, the world, and the devil.
We realize that the act of the resurrection of Christ is full of mysteries from the beginning. The resurrection of Christ is not just an ordinary return to this world. Those who were clinically dead and brought to life cannot be said to have risen from the dead because the new life that Jesus promised to each of us will no longer be subject to natural laws. There will be no second death, pain, farewell, fear, disease … Rising from the dead means reaching the second bank, which is the eternal God, infinite Love.
We thank the apostles today for making it so difficult for them to receive the risen Jesus. This gave us evidence, an example, a reinforcement that today we are reviving our faith in the resurrection of our bodies.

We know that God speaks to us not only in the church when reading from and interpreting the Scriptures, but whenever we can find time for God, most often during prayer, attending Holy Mass, approaching the sacraments, acts of Christian physical or spiritual mercy.
When cutting wood, his son understood that it is good for his father to pray for his conversion, but he must do his part in changing his life, abandoning the habit of intoxication. Let us not be surprised that even in our lives, it is up to us to show with our lives that we believe in our body’s resurrection to a new life.