Our Easter Joy

Today as we hail Christ as our Lord and God we are filled with the joy of the disciples in seeing the risen Lord. In this season of renewal we are like those early Christians who who were “filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described.

Readings:

Acts of the Apostles  2: 42-47

Psalm 117: 2-4, 13-15, 22-24

I St Peter 1: 3-9

John 20: 19-31

Scripture Reflection

Between the end of Eastertide and the beginning of Advent we are going to hear a lot about the introduction of the revised Prayers for Mass. This follows a re-examination of the translation of those prayers from Latin, as used in the Roman Missal, into English under the reform of the Sacred Liturgy, which was introduced in the decade which followed the Second Vatican Council. The concern of the Church is that this translation did not strictly reflect, for English speaking countries, the idiom of the prayers for Mass as set out in the Missal - and we should revert to that idiom which will maintain the correct link to the prayers of the Church. This will mirror a similar process for all translations into the principal languages of the world. Consistent with that, the Church also wishes our communities to mirror today more closely the early Christian communities in their way of living as set out in the Acts of the Apostles. That way of living is fully described in today's first reading. There are some key phrases in that reading:

 

1. ✦they remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles;
   

2. ✦they shared out [the value of their property] among themselves according to what each one needed;
   

3. ✦they went as a body to the temple;
   

4. ✦they were looked up to by everyone.
   

 

The early Christians were identifiable within their community because they lived their lives in a way which was so different from the norm. When the persecution of the Christian communities began it was easy for them to be identified because they were so different from the rest of society - they stood out. They were filled, in the words of the Letter of St. Peter in the Second Reading today, with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described because you believe and you are sure of the end to which your faith looks forward: the salvation of your souls.

Each one of us can ask ourselves whether we could subscribe to having such a joy, such a singular sense of what is the direction of our lives.  That phrase - because you believe - is also the subject of the conclusion to the Gospel of John, when Jesus declares: Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe. The purpose of the Evangelist in recording the signs that Jesus gave as to his identity is set out in the last quite wonderful sentence of this Gospel passage which is worth recording in full.

1. These [signs] are recorded so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have [eternal] life in his name.
   

The passage in the second reading and the concluding sentence of the Gospel both focus on belief in Jesus as the Son of God as the crucial element of our lives because through this faith we enter into eternal life.