Third Sunday of Easter, Cycle B

“He is risen!” It might be the battle cry of the Apostles. However, they must provide strong evidence to support this claim. Unfortunately, they have no body cameras to record what really happened back then. They have indeed provided proof and testimony but were not always accepted and believed.

But before that, our Lord Jesus Himself also experienced the same rejection by His Apostles themselves. On many occasions, Jesus tries to convince them that He really rose from the dead. Beginning from the moment before His crucifixion when He told them that the Son of Man must suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day, then His appearance to Mary Magdalene, His encounter with the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, His appearance to the disciples who were fishing in the lake of Tiberias, and in our Gospel reading today, when he appeared to the disciples and ate with them. These tell us how doubtful the disciples were about the resurrection of Jesus.

Added to this, the Lord even struggled to convince them not only that He rose again from the dead, but the very fact that He is not a ghost. To prove His identity, Jesus gave them several arguments but were not sufficient to remove their doubts. So, stronger proof is needed – food. He asked for food and ate in front of them. Jesus did this not because He was hungry, but simply to prove that He was not a ghost. He was the one who once lived with them, suffered, died, and now has risen and is alive again.

These opened the minds and hearts of the disciples who were so slow to understand anything written in the Holy Scriptures. They had indeed lived together with Jesus, they had seen His works, and had heard His teachings, but they did not know Him and did not believe in Him. Today Jesus opened the minds and hearts of the disciples, made them understand the contents of the Scriptures and asked them to become living witnesses of His resurrection.

What about us? Have we opened our minds and hearts to understand the meaning of the resurrection? Or are we too slow also in understanding what is written in the Bible about the resurrection?