Third Sunday of Easter - Cycle B

Acts 3:13-15, 17-19
1 Jn 2:1-5a
Lk 24:35-48

The readings today make it clear that the events of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday were foretold, and that they occurred for the purpose of repentance. In the same way that God foresaw these events, he foresaw each of us having the opportunity to receive the grace and salvation that these events bring. The way to celebrate the Easter season, in other words, is to actually repent, to take hold of the transforming power of Christ’s death and resurrection, and as a result to be “made perfect in love,” as John describes in the second reading. What happens in our lives – and what can happen still – is just as much in God’s sight, from all eternity, as what happened to Christ.

Peter, furthermore, calls Christ “the author of life” in the first reading, and the Gospel passage clearly reveals that this author of life is not a ghost, but a person who has real flesh and blood. As we are transformed by Easter and grow in God’s love, we grow in our deep appreciation for the gift of life (natural and supernatural), and our appreciation of the body. One key theme of the culture of death is the false separation of the body from the person. In other words, people “do what they want with their bodies,” and even look the other way when the bodies of children are aborted, because they often believe that the body is not important, or is not as much an aspect of the person as is the soul. But the physical resurrection of Christ is a revelation of the sacredness of the human body, and of the fact that the love we are called to have, the commandments we are called to obey, and the repentance we are called to practice all involve a deep reverence for physical human life.