spin


Monday, April 8, 2013

Resurrection Musings: Jesus and the Apostles


And what of Jesus?  What was his experience of the Resurrection?  Okay, it’s a question someone should wade into with more than just the theological floaties I wear. But let’s take a simple angle.  What we can affirm is this: he loved it.   In the Resurrection he is no phantom nor is he the man who lived before.  He can hold substance but he cannot be held bound by it.  He is the same; he is radically different.  He is living a new kind of existence.  A new way of being the world had never known.

By the sea they breakfasted and they laughed.  They marveled that he could laugh, and he was glad they did, for it was all very marvelous.  “Can you imagine,” he said to them, “can you just try to imagine what joy is mine in the resurrection?  Can you begin to comprehend how delighted I am to begin our new way of living?  I’ve come back for you—I said I would—because I wanted to be with you forever. Do you now understand? Are you yet believing?  I have come that you may have life; you have yet to truly know the life I give you.”

The Lord laughed.  He stood up on his feet, the sand pushing boastfully through their wounds.  His laughter rolled gladly from his gut.  Peter was hunched over, one hand held high shielding the rising sun, watching the silhouette of the Lord’s heaving torso and the mist of his breath meeting forcefully the salty air.  John, propelled by the pushing and stammering of his little heart, sprung up amid his own laughter clinging to Jesus and he felt like flying.  James, his brother, remained seated beside Peter at the charcoal fire chewing the meat of the fish and staring at the two men.  The meat was easy, and he used the bones to pluck it out from between his molars while he studied the man’s hands through which sunbeams passed as if they held the morning star.  He looked at Peter who was tearful and smiling, and to John, bouncing around with the One who rose from the dead, and he looked behind them both where the seagulls perched about his old fishing boat with its nets packed and taut, wedged into the  beach where he left it.  James put his hands to his knees and pushed himself up from his seat.  He stretched his back and flicked his toothpick to the wind.  “This is going to be very interesting,” he said and he said it again even softer as the seagulls circled out to sea around them.  And it was.  That is the one thing it would always be, fascinating.

+ Br. Joseph Michael Fino, CFR
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We need your help!

No comments:

Post a Comment