8 April 2021

Thursday in the Octave of Easter

The Risen Lord offers peace and the power to bear witness. Today’s Gospel reading from Luke (24:35-48) continues where yesterday’s ended, when the two disciples recount to the Eleven what happened to them along the way to Emmaus.

Jesus’ first word to his apostles is one of peace. After the horror and tragedy of the Cross, when all of the apostles save one fled and they saw their master brutally executed, the hearts of these men and those disciples with them desperately need the peace that Jesus offers. We too need that peace to comfort us in times of despair and to dispel the doubts and questions that arise in our hearts whenever we encounter evil and sin. Armed with the peace that Jesus offers them, the apostles have the strength to be witnesses of his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, as he says: “You are witnesses of these things.” In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles (3:11-26), Peter and John bear witness in fulfilment of Jesus’ words. We too, as Christians descended from the apostolic generation, are “witnesses of these things,” both in their historical reality nearly two thousand years ago as well as in the many ways that Jesus’ Paschal mystery plays itself out in our own lives. Let us ask the risen Lord to be his witnesses both in word and in deed, as true disciples armed and strengthened with his peace.