Complete fulfillment of Christian faith

We, Christians today, find ourselves in a situation not much different from the situation of the distraught followers of Christ on the way of the Cross, His crucifixion and ignominious death. Those who witnessed all that happened during the Passion were the first believers who proclaimed His sufferings and torture in the hands of Jews and Romans alike. Like us at present. We live at a time when the evil that men do seem to gain the upperhand in every sector of society, making us apprehensive, fearful, dismayed, feeling so unsafe, so insecure. Like those who lived during the time when Christ was arrested, scourged, crowned with thorns, made to carry a heavy cross where He was nailed hanging between heaven and earth, the very elements of nature reacting violently with lightning and thunder, the ground under the feet shaking.

We become dismayed, confused, broken wondering whether God is still around or whether he has forgotten or abandoned us. Or maybe this is punishment for the murder of Jesus, the crimes perpetrated to this very day and the reckoning of sins being committed. Our misgivings do run counter to the truth that God is all-Goodness, so we have all the reason to trust Him. He is Mercy; He is Love, Compassion. He gave His only-begotten Son, Jesus, to redeem us from the mire of sins, and that redemption He accomplished and still accomplishes with His very life. He became man, remaining God who loved us to His very death on the Cross. That He is Love can never change. To speak of God as vengeful and our present calamities as the wrath of God is to deny His divine nature as the unchanging goodness, mercy, love and compassion.

The evils that we experience proceed from the sins of man, his abuses against nature and the environment which very often we call the advances of science, the over-ambitious conquest of the earth as against God’s original order of all that He created with its order and harmony, its grandeur and beauty. We partake in the work of redemption when we live to restore that original order and beauty, when with Christ we resurrect what has been dead to sin and rebellion against God.

The Resurrection of Christ is at the center of our faith. The apostle Paul affirms: "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain" (I Cor. 15:14). Those among us who know from Scriptures the resurrection narratives, the empty tomb becomes the link between the crucifixion and resurrection. At the moment of discovery of the open tomb, John (20:2) has Mary Magdalene conclude: "They" (presumably Jesus’ enemies) "have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they put Him." But to their amazement, the followers of Jesus learned that no such human explanation sufficed. The Jesus who had died appeared to them alive!

The appearances of the risen Jesus led Christians to a faith that enabled them to look back and see that the empty tomb itself already could be understood as a revelation that Jesus was no longer dead. In the first appearance recounted in the Gospel for today, Jesus breathes on the disciples and they receive the Holy Spirit, recreating them as God’s children with eternal life. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus referred to Himself as the one sent by God; the disciples are now sent to continue His work in the world with His power over evil and sin. The various Gospels mention doubt when Jesus appears to His disciples after His Resurrection. Only John dramatizes that doubt in an individual – Thomas who would not believe. Paradoxically, however, from the lips of the ‘doubting Thomases’ comes the highest confession of faith in all Gospels: My Lord and my God."

Christian faith is God’s disclosure to the human person of Himself, not merely as an external motive of faith but as one divine unity of Three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – who wants to fill up all the dimensions of every individual person (physical, emotional, intellectual, moral, spiritual) so that every dimension is ordered to God. In Christian faith, God is revealed to each and every one of us, communicating Himself – a self-communication we call Grace; and the complete fulfillment of our Christian faith is love. In Christian faith, God lays claim to all our subsequent life, discloses Himself both as a perfect Lover and as our surpassing (supernatural) final end and goal, containing in itself the perfect fulfillment of all our hopes and dreams.

Second Sunday of Easter, John 20:19-31.