Word to the Wise
Thursday, April 25, 2019 - Octave of Easter - Thurs
[Acts 3:11-26 and Luke 24:35-48]"These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said to them, "Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. [Luke] "....but God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer." [Acts]
It is no coincidence that the two scriptures for today's celebration of the Eucharist seem to emphasize the same thing. They are by the same evangelist: St. Luke. What these scriptures emphasize is that everything the hearers had seen and heard about Jesus was foretold in the scriptures that they already had, namely, the law of Moses, the prophets, the Psalms, etc.. Each Sunday, we say together in the Nicene Creed: "For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES." The experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in yesterday's gospel scripture immediately precedes the scene in today's. In both scenes the minds of those who encounter the risen Jesus are opened to understand the scriptures.
There is a second emphasis as well in both of today's passages. Peter proclaims: The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses. In the gospel scene, Jesus tells the disciples, "You are witnesses of these things.
The Scriptures and personal witness go together. In the Eucharist we celebrate the memory of Jesus' saving actions on our behalf, but to do this we must know and believe in those actions. We learn this from the personal witness of those who go before us and from the Scriptures, which are a form of written witness. The faith has been passed on from one witness to the other. It is not just clergy and religious who do this. It is ALL of us who are witnesses together with the inspired Word of God. The same Holy Spirit is to be found in the pages of the Bible and in the hearts of believers. Without these witnesses and that Holy Spirit, there could be no real celebration of the Eucharist, no sacraments, no Church. AMEN