The Good Shepherd’s voice is the only one which can make sense of our entire existence, including our painful past, of our traumatic experiences and of our failures. It is the only voice which opens our present circumstances to a positive future without fear, no matter the challenges in front of us.
“When trials and disillusionment occur, no matter whether we are newly baptized or ‘old Catholics’, that is the time to gather in the community, to re-read our life in the light of the Scriptures and to break the bread together. It will take time, but I guarantee that eventually everything will fall into place” writes Fr Paolo Consonni in this Sunday Reflection.
The disciples on the way to Emmaus resemble those of us who expect the spectacular from God. We are cowed down by the evil of the world and fail to recognise that the Messiah accompanies us in the greatest miracle on this journey through life – the Eucharist.
Only when we see in Jesus’ wounds the reflection of our own inner wounds, and also the wounds of our brothers and sisters which await to be nursed and tended with the Mercy flowing from the Cross, then healing is possible, and life can have a fresh start. That is the way we concretely experience the Resurrection.
Thomas has, unfortunately, been given the epithet of the “Doubter.” But Thomas the Apostle stands for all of us, who at some point or the other have to make that leap of faith, to go beyond human understanding to believe in the resurrection of our Lord and all that we are promised as Easter people.
In this reflection, Fr Paolo Consonni considers the Resurrection as a birth into new life passing through the pangs of death. While affirming that Jesus rose from the dead by virtue of His divine power, he highlights the human experience of Jesus on the Cross and how His cry for the Father’s love and mercy was answered through the Resurrection.
In this reflection, Fr Jijo Kandamkulathy writes that Jesus’ resurrection is a sign of hope for us and urges us to throw off the shackles of the fear of death. Death, which is the result of sin, is defeated, and life, represented in Christ Himself, emerges victorious.
In the midst of our modern world’s tragedies and the feeling of God’s absence, Holy Saturday reminds us of Christ’s descent into death and his active work for our salvation. Even in our darkest moments, we can find hope in the loving voice of God leading us out of the realm of death and into life.
Christ’s death was not a sign of defeat, but a triumph. There is no crown before the cross, and it is only through suffering that His mission as saviour was accomplished. This is the message that every Christian needs to integrate into his life.
Jesus’ own death and resurrection gives us the motivation not only to courageously accept death but also to meaningfully live our life as a gift of love, like Jesus, in the logic of the grain of wheat, that ‘unless falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit’.