Look at My Hands and My Feet ~ reflex on Luke 24:35-48

Alleluia! He is risen.

The Anointed One, Crucified One, the Pierced One, is now the Risen One.

We have pondered and prepared for 40 days, and now we celebrate for 50 days, beginning with these eight days of observing one long Easter Sunday! The Octave of Easter brings us to the Eighth Day, the symbol of the new creation Christ set in motion, the Feast of Divine Mercy.

All sorrow and the shackles of sin have been dissolved in Christ’s Resurrection. And yet, when He appears to His Apostles, the wounds that He suffered to win that victory are still visible. His Sacrifice is forever signified and memorialized in His glorified Body, not erased and forgotten. He proves this by eating real food and showing them His real wounds. Why?

Because those wounds – that sacrifice – is the answer to every human question. Jesus didn’t come and explain away or disregard human suffering and struggle. His answer is to draw it all to Himself, conquer it in His own Person, in His very Heart, and carry it to the bosom of the Father where it is wrapped in the infinite light of God’s glorious Love.

What about our woundedness, our sufferings? When we are at last set free eternally, will our struggles be erased and forgotten? No! Not if we unite our sufferings to the Cross of Christ. When we take up our cross each day for love of Him in this life, all our wounds are glorified in the life to come. In Heaven, will we not know that the blind man was blind, that the crippled man was once crippled? Will we not know that the Peter was crucified upside down, Paul beheaded, Perpetua gored, Lawrence grilled, Joan of Arc burned at the stake, Miguel Pro shot, Edith Stein sent to the gas chamber? Of course we will. Their suffering was their glorious gift of love and ours can be too. Our share in the Passion is valuable and precious in God’s eyes, and echoes in the halls of eternity forever!

So we must not recoil from the difficulties of the day, as they are the means by which we take up our cross to follow Him, as He instructed. We will have trouble in the world, but He has overcome the world; in Him, we will overcome the world too, and every hardship and suffering that we accept and offer to Him will be turned into a shining sign of our willingness to walk with Him in love in every moment.  

His Heart leads the way to suffering love. In this is our peace.