24 April 2025 - Thursday in the Octave of Easter
Homily
The most surprising thing in this Gospel is the fear that seizes the eleven Apostles and their companions. Shortly before, the disciples who had met Jesus on the road to Emmaus and recognised him in the breaking of the bread had returned to tell the Apostles about these things. They had replied: ‘It is true! The Lord has risen, and he has appeared to Simon’. Before that there had been the testimony of the women who came to the tomb on Easter morning. So everyone already knew that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. Suddenly, even as they were talking together about Jesus, he appeared among them and simply said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ And that was enough to frighten them and fill them with fear. What is the source of this fear?
The reason for their fear is undoubtedly that the Jesus who is present among them is different from the image they have of him, and which they continue to talk about.
Is there not something similar happening today in our so-called old Christian countries? We talk about Jesus a lot, as the Apostles did among themselves. Perhaps we too easily forget that Jesus is different from all the images we have of Him. These images can be useful to us in order to come into personal contact with Him, and especially to ‘talk about Him’; they may have served the whole of the Christian people in the so-called eras of ‘Christianity’. But these images are no longer an effective mediation for a very large number of men and women of our time, who have not necessarily rejected Christ, even when they have abandoned sacramental practice and perhaps even the ecclesial institution.
There would no doubt be good reason to be much less sure of everything we have to say about Jesus and to let him make himself present among us in unexpected ways. The pierced hands and feet that he shows us are the hands and feet of all his brothers and sisters wounded by wars and hatred. Through the mouths of all the hungry people on earth he tells us over and over again: ‘Do you have anything to eat?’.
Nowadays, there is much talk of the ‘New Evangelisation’ and the need to re-evangelise Western society. To do this, it is essential that we rid ourselves of all the often highly sentimental images we have of Jesus that have accumulated in the collective consciousness over many centuries but no longer speak to the women and men of today. Let us expose ourselves once again to the impact of the very words of the Gospel. Let us allow Jesus to enter into our lives and ask us ‘why are you so troubled?’ and call us once again to ‘the conversion that comes from faith in his name, for the forgiveness of sins’.
Armand VEILLEUX