THIS SUNDAY S HOMILY Luke 24: rd Sunday of Easter Year B Fr. Michael Brizio, IMC

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1 Page 1 of 7 THIS SUNDAY S HOMILY Luke 24: rd Sunday of Easter Year B Fr. Michael Brizio, IMC Many of us remember the 1970s musical and movie Jesus Christ, Superstar, which attempted to tell the story of Christ in modern words and settings. The music is beautiful, often bewitching, like the lines: I don t know how to love Him. Although some parts of the movie make fun of what is sacred, it certainly made us think about Christ and ask the many questions that we are still asking today, as in the passage: Jesus Christ, Superstar, are you who they say you are? But, of course, the movie leaves the question hanging in the air.

2 Page 2 of 7 But the biggest fault of Jesus Christ Superstar is that it leaves out the resurrection of Christ. It takes us to His death and leaves Him there the dead Jesus. And, as far as the shattered disciples were concerned, Jesus was also dead, dead and gone, finished; and they knew what is left when a person dies: death certificates, undertakers, funerals, a grave and a circle of grieving loved ones and friends. Therefore, their first response to the appearance of Jesus was fear, disbelief, wonder, and uncertainty about what it means to be in the presence of someone who has just passed through the obscurity of death and betrayal, and now comes back to life wishing them peace. Today s Gospel reminds us that the resurrected Jesus returns among the disciples not in a disembodied and purely flimsy spiritual state; not as some wonderful hallucination; not as a mist or a wind or a ghost; or as some spark of life ready to be absorbed back into the Divine radiance. But, to the disciples locked in the Upper Room, Jesus comes in a body: a body that

3 Page 3 of 7 has flesh and bones; a body that maintains a substantial connection with the body he originally had - and He tells them, A spirit has not flesh and bones as you can see I have. The risen Christ was a real person, speaking, smiling, eating with them, extending his arms to them and saying, Touch me and see for yourselves : I am the same person that walked with you, taught you, cried and laughed with you. In other words, Jesus resurrected body, was a body real enough to be felt and to have wounds; a body real enough to walk on the road to Emmaus, to appear in the form of a gardener; and a body real enough to eat grilled fish with the disciples. But, that was not the whole story: something radical had happened. Jesus new body was a new creation functioning in a mysterious way; His body reflected the old body, but was not the same old body reassembled or cloned or revived. Just ask those early witnesses. Mary Magdalene wept by an empty tomb, and though Jesus came and stood behind her, she did not recognize him until he spoke to her;

4 Page 4 of 7 two disciples on the road to Emmaus joined with a stranger who opened up the meaning of the Scriptures, but they did not know who it was until he broke bread with them at the evening meal, then he just vanished from their sight. myself. In other words, we cannot read today s Gospel without noting that the body of the risen Lord was the same, yet radically different, timeless, spaceless, and magnificently real. This new body, the one that Paul later referred to as the incorruptible body or the spiritual body, was the reality those early disciples saw and touched: not limited and perishable like the old body, but very real, very present, very loving, very glorious: Don t be afraid, says Jesus, it is I Above all, by looking at the resurrected body of our Lord, we are given a preview of our new body at the end of time, when He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body (Phil.3:21). Perhaps our body has never been very strong, our sight never has been crisp, our hearing very clear, our walk very sturdy, nor our heart very steady.

5 Page 5 of 7 But, just as God can make an oak out of an acorn or a tulip out of a bulb, He makes a new body out of the old one: a body without corruption, a body without weakness - a body identical to the body of Jesus. We will receive a renewed body, and our bodies will have a future with God; what is now crooked will be straightened, what is now faulty will be fixed, what is now arthritic will be cured, what is now weak will be strong in heaven; our body will be different, but we won t have a different body. We will live forever in this body we were given; but our resurrected body will be unlike any we have ever imagined - it will be raised in power and given a form like that of Jesus glorious and resplendent body. By the way, the Blessed Virgin Mary already shares fully in the resurrection of Christ, and with her Assumption already enjoys a glorious body.

6 Page 6 of 7 Today s Gospel gives us hope, encouragement and joy. In contemplating Jesus resurrected body, we are reminded that we do not die into nothingness; that this old and disjointed jalopy of a body will not simply be refurbished, or that we will take a long sleep and then get up to live forever on this planet; or that we will go through endless reincarnations into this world. Instead, we look forward to the time when we will be totally raised up, completely transformed into another form of existence, entirely a new creation, forever endowed with a body as real as the risen Christ - no longer bound by any of the limitations of time and space and sickness and sin. At the same time, the promise of sharing in Christ s bodily resurrection encourages us to be sincerely hopeful in situations in our lives that from the outside seem hopeless; and to find meaning and grace in situations of disappointment and sorrow. The hope in the resurrection of our body helps to see that God has not abandoned us; and that we can see his loving hand in every corner of our world and every circumstance of our life. In the Eucharist we look and we touch the wounds and the glorious Body and Blood of the resurrected Christ; we make the memorial of His death and resurrection; we ask to be made worthy of eternal life, and we profess our faith in the resurrection of our body.

7 Page 7 of 7 Our bodies count; God makes them, sustains them, and resurrects them; let us respect them and treat them as the sacred temple of God, destined to share in Jesus radiance of life where we shall know and be known, and with Christ we shall love and be loved.