Reflection for Thursday in the Octave of Easter
we think of something that lasts for ever,
something eternal
something infinite.
When we love somebody we love him or her
not for a limited amount of time,
but if possible for ever.
We know that for us humans this is not possible.
Our love for each other fluctuates.
Sometimes we love each other a lot and selflessly.
Other times, we find it hard to love.
Above all, we know that our love is limited by death.
Although we can love somebody who has died,
once we are dead, we cannot love someone who is alive.
There is a beautiful passage in Paul to the Romans, which says,
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Trouble? Harship? Persecution? Death?
Nothing will separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (cf Rom 8)
But God's love for us is different.
It is always complete, always selfless and constant.
This is the meaning of the resurrection.
It is God's love that endures even beyond death,
that is, even beyond any obstacle:
be it sin, be it our egoism, be it death itself.
God's love expressed not only by giving us his son to teach us how to live
not even only by his death, where he became one with us in our own anguish and sin and death
but most of all in raising Jesus from the dead.
It is there that we realize the extent of God's love for us.
Now you might be saying,
"Nice words! Wishful thinking! It is all in the mind! It's too good to be true"
Well those are the same words that the disciples were saying.
Just as in another Gospel they are in the middle of the rough seas,
about to be lost at sea,
when they see Jesus approaching them
and the same thoughts come to mind.
But to prove that what they are experiencing is true,
he asks for something to eat and he eats a grilled fish in front of their very eyes.
In doing so he shows them that he is not simply part of the worldly reality again,
but something more than that.
In eating the fish in front of his eyes,
he shows them that now all of reality is incorporated in the risen Christ.
And therefore we too are part of story of love that never ends.
Christ risen has changed our reality once and for all.
He did not simply change the way we think of feel as things that pass.
Loving beyond sin
and hatred
and even beyond death
is something that we can experience
in our own life,
in our own flesh
and in our own network of relationships
because they too, like the fish
are incorporated into the Risen Christ.
I would like to end by suggesting a little task for us to do some time today.
Let us time some time to look back on our day or even our life to see where the Risen Christ was present and we did not even notice.
In doing so we will notice glimpses of the Risen Christ,
that is, of moments where God was loving us beyond our human limitations of sin and self centeredness.
In doing so, we will be doing exactly as we heard Peter do in the first reading:
reviewing history in the light of the Resurrection of Christ.
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