Third Sunday of Easter Acts 3:13-15 & 17-19; 1 Jn 2:1-5; Lk 24:35-48 (Year B)
“It was you who accused the Holy One, the Just One, you who demanded the reprieve of a murderer while you killed the prince of life. God, however, raised him from the dead, and to that fact we are the witnesses.”
We cannot truly know Christ as our Risen Lord without first accepting Peter’s charge levelled at a sinful world. Sin, both great and small, cannot be diminished. It must lead to the confession that “ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrow he carried.” Only when we have acknowledged the burden of past sin do we truly turn to our advocate with the Father. “If anyone should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ who is just; he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and not only ours, but the whole world’s.”
Like the disciples in Luke’s Gospel, we encounter our Risen Lord as wounded sinners. Their first reaction was alarm and fright. “Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts?”
We come before the Lord as those seeking his presence, yet burdened with the confusion and doubts that bind our wounded lives. “On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed.”
The disciples found peace in their surrender to a Risen, wounded Lord. “Look at my hands and my feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves. And as he said this, he showed them his hands and feet.”
John’s Gospel, describing the Lord’s encounter with Thomas, likewise draws attention to a glory still bearing the wounds of the past. “Look, here are my hands. Give me your hand. Put it into my side. Doubt no longer but believe.”
At the heart of the Resurrection is Christ, the wounded healer. The wounds he bore are our wounds. The wounds that hinder become, in him, the wounds that heal. As the wounds of Calvary were raised up in the Resurrection, so our wounded past is not forgotten, but transformed into the glory of his presence.
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