The Gift of Faith and the Power of Witnesses: The Third Sunday of Easter

Scripture Readings
First Acts 3:13-15, 17-19
Second 1 John 2:1-5a
Gospel Luke 24:35-48

Prepared by: Fr. James Cuddy, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• Belief in Christ makes us sons and daughters of God. It is this filial adoption that gives us the
ability to grow in virtue and grace, to do the things that we could not do by our own unaided
efforts. This proclamation that Jesus is Lord not only changes our lives, but can be used by
god to draw others into the same mysteries that we celebrate. But ultimately, faith is always a
gift for which each Christian should pray, that it may be sustained through times of temptation
and given growth.

2. Exegetical Notes
• First Reading: The miraculous healing performed by Peter serves to set up the kerygmatic
proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah.
• By addressing God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and our Fathers, Peter
demonstrates that the Church is a continuation of Israel – God’s chosen people (cf. JBC).
• “The author of life you put to death”: Here the Gk word does not mean author, but leader. It is
Christ who leads his people into the inheritance promised to our fathers and restores us to
right relationship with the Father (cf. JBC).
• Second Reading: Christ’s is expiation for the sins of the whole world. The blood shed on the
Cross is that powerful and efficacious. And it is all done out of love for God’s degenerate
children. It is the combination of that love and that unsurpassed power that makes him an
intercessor par excellence.
• “The way we may be sure that we know him is to keep his commandments”: Saint John is
careful to underline the truth that true knowledge of God is always reflected in human action.
Knowledge of God necessarily brings with it constant conversion.
• Gospel: Luke tells us that the disciples were startled and terrified and thought they were
seeing a ghost. “Such a repetitious insistence makes it clear that the acceptance of the
resurrection: (1) rests upon faith and cannot be the result of any human proof, including
 divine apparitions; (2) cannot stem from earlier announcements of Jesus, which remain
insufficient” (JBC).

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• 597 The historical complexity of Jesus' trial is apparent in the Gospel accounts. The personal
sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence we
cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry
of a manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles' calls to
conversion after Pentecost. Jesus himself, in forgiving them on the cross, and Peter in
following suit, both accept "the ignorance" of the Jews of Jerusalem and even of their
leaders. Still less can we extend responsibility to other Jews of different times and places,
based merely on the crowd's cry: "His blood be on us and on our children!", a formula for
ratifying a judicial sentence.
• 519 All Christ's riches "are for every individual and are everybody's property." Christ did not
live his life for himself but for us, from his Incarnation "for us men and for our salvation" to his
death "for our sins" and Resurrection "for our justification". He is still "our advocate with the
Father", who "always lives to make intercession" for us. He remains ever "in the presence of
God on our behalf, bringing before him all that he lived and suffered for us.”
• 643 Given all these testimonies, Christ’s Resurrection cannot be interpreted as something
outside the physical order, and it is impossible not to acknowledge it as an historical fact. It is
clear from the facts that the disciples’ faith was drastically put to the test by their master's
Passion and death on the cross, which he had foretold. The shock provoked by the Passion
was so great that at least some of the disciples did not at once believe in the news of the
Resurrection. Far from showing us a community seized by a mystical exaltation, the Gospels
present us with disciples demoralized (“looking sad”) and frightened. For they had not
believed the holy women returning from the tomb and had regarded their words as an “idle
tale”. When Jesus reveals himself to the Eleven on Easter evening, “he upbraided them for
their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after
he had risen.”
• 644 Even when faced with the reality of the risen Jesus the disciples are still doubtful, so
impossible did the thing seem: they thought they were seeing a ghost. “In their joy they were
still disbelieving and still wondering.” . . . Therefore the hypothesis that the Resurrection was
produced by the apostles’ faith (or credulity) will not hold up. On the contrary their faith in the
Resurrection was born, under the action of divine grace, from their direct experience of the
reality of the risen Jesus.
• 572 The Church remains faithful to the interpretation of “all the Scriptures” that Jesus gave
both before and after his Passover: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these
things and enter into his glory?” Jesus’ sufferings took their historical, concrete form from the
fact that he was “rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes”, who handed
“him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified”.

4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities

• Gregory the Great: “There is a problem here. A righteous advocate never takes unrighteous
cases, which ours of course are. What can we do, dear brothers? The only way to get around
this is to follow what Scripture says: The righteous man accuses himself first of all. Therefore
a sinner who weeps over his sins and accuses himself is set on the path of righteousness,
and Jesus can take up his case.”
• Didymus the Blind: “Often in the Scriptures, the word know means not just being aware of
something but having personal experience of it. Jesus did not know sin, not because He was
unaware of what it is but because He never committed it Himself. For although He is like us
in every other way, He never sinned. Given this meaning of the word know, it is clear that
anyone who says that he knows God must also keep his commandments, for the two go
together.”
• Ignatius of Antioch: “He said to them, Lay hold, handle Me, and see that I am not an
incorporeal spirit. And immediately they touched Him, and believed, being convinced both by
His flesh and spirit. For this cause also they despised death, and were found its conquerors.
And after his resurrection He did eat and drink with them, as being possessed of flesh,
although spiritually He was united to the Father.”
• Gregory Nazianzen: “Let us then reverence the gift of peace, which Christ when He
departed hence left to us. Peace both in name and reality is sweet . . . For peace is peculiarly
of God, who binds all things together in one, to whom nothing so much belongs as the unity
of nature, and a peaceful condition. . . . It is diffused through the whole creation, whose glory
is tranquillity. But in us it abides in our souls indeed by the following and imparting of the
virtues, in our bodies by the harmony of our members and organs, of which the one is called
beauty, the other health.”
• John Paul II: “Our personal encounter with Christ bathes life in new light, sets us on the right
path, and sends us out to be his witnesses. This new way of looking at the world and at
people, which comes to us from him, leads us more deeply into the mystery of faith, which is
not just a collection of theoretical assertions to be accepted and approved by the mind, but
an experience to be had, a truth to be lived, the salt and light of all reality.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• You are witnesses of these things. Those who give witness to the primacy of Christ in the
world and proclaim him as Lord have always had a profound influence on the lives of others.
And while one won’t find the name “Tom Wells” in Butler’s Lives of the Saints, his is a story
that shows this truth clearly. In 2000, Monsignor Wells was killed by a homeless man in the
rectory of his Georgetown, MD church. Wells exuded joy in his priesthood and changed the
lives of his parishioners. His life – and death – inspired many young men to lay down their
own lives in the same way. And in 2006, four of the young men from his parish were ordained
priests in the Archdiocese of Washington (cf. Recommended Resources, below).

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• “The Holy Spirit appears to us as the guarantor of the active presence of the mystery in
history, the One who ensures its realization down the centuries. Thanks to the Paraclete, it
will always be possible for subsequent generations to have the same experience of the Risen
 One that was lived by the apostolic community at the origin of the Church, since it is passed
on and actualized in the faith, worship and communion of the People of God, on pilgrimage
through time.”
• “And so it is that we today, in the Easter Season, are living the encounter with the Risen One
not only as something of the past, but in the present communion of the faith, liturgy and life of
the Church. The Church's apostolic Tradition consists in this transmission of the goods of
salvation which, through the power of the Spirit makes the Christian community the
permanent actualization of the original communion.”
• “In his historical life, Jesus limited his mission to the house of Israel, but already made it clear
that the gift was not only destined for the People of Israel but to everyone in the world and to
every epoch. . . . The universalism of salvation, moreover, requires that the Easter memorial
be celebrated in history without interruption until Christ's glorious return.

7. Other Considerations
• As is often the case, the proper prayers for this Sunday’s Mass can give direction to the
homily. The Opening Prayer thanks God because our adoption as sons and daughters has
“restored the joy of our youth”. This suggests a certain purity and fullness of joy that adults
often lack and the world often cannot deliver.
• This theme of joy is carried out in the other prayers of the Mass: “Let all the earth cry out to
God with joy” (Introit); “. . . restored the joy of our youth” (OP); “May the great joy you give
us come to perfection in heaven” (Offertory Prayer); “We praise you with greater joy than
ever in this Easter season, when Christ became our paschal sacrifice . . . The joy of the
resurrection renews the whole world, ” (Preface of Easter II – New Life in Christ).

Recommended Resources
A fine article telling the story of Monsignor Tom Wells and the “Wells Guys” (mentioned above)
can be found through the Washington Post website:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/27/AR2006052701082.html
A searchable electronic version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and a very useful Bible
Study based upon the liturgical calendar (and drawing heavily upon the Jerome Biblical
Commentary) can be found at the parish website of St. Charles Borromeo in Picayune, MS.
http://www.scborromeo.org.
Pope Benedict XVI, Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI.