13 April 2023
Thursday in the Octave of Easter
“Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see, I have… and as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.” Today, our Gospel puts before us the simple yet reality shattering testimony of the disciples encountering the Resurrected Christ in the flesh. Jesus assures them that he is not a ghost, not a vision, not a dream, but a real living and breathing human/diving being alive in the flesh. Evidence of this is that he eats, he can touch them, and – still more profoundly – his hands and his feet which still bear the marks of his cross. It is these sacred hands and feet that are the most profound witness on the body of the resurrected Christ. His resurrection was real, and his cross was real. The resurrected Christ bears in his body the wounds of the cross precisely because these wounds are the means of our salvation.
The Resurrection sheds new light on the cross, on suffering, and on Christ. Easter sheds new light on our sufferings, our crosses, and our wounds. Christ longs to heal us and in so doing to transform our wounds into channels of his grace, mercy, and love so that we too and show others that our crosses were not useless but were transformed into moments of salvific grace through Christ.
Let us pray for the grace today to be in awe and wonder at our God who is alive and not dead and who won for us our salvation through the cross which we are able to see because of his resurrection. Also, let us pray that we might find consolation and hope in the Resurrected Christ to heal and transform our wounds and crosses into moments to reveal God’s glory.