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
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