Third Sunday of Easter

Acts 3:13-15, 17-19 1 Jn 2:1-5 Lk 24:35-48

 

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

 

We move further into the Easter celebrations today. Our readings, especially the first reading and the Gospel, are very clear. If we want to understand Jesus Christ, we must know the Scriptures of our ancestors in the faith, the Jewish people. Christ can only be understood as the fulfillment of the prophecies and the sacred writings which all point to Him.

This leaves us the challenge: How well do we know the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures? If we don’t know them, we must begin to study them. We are not taking an academic course on them, but we want to understand them as our religious ancestors understood them. If we can begin to understand the Hebrew Scriptures, we can begin to understand more profoundly Jesus Christ as our Savior and the Messiah (brother Philip).

We can agree with the First Letter of Saint John: By keeping the Word of the Lord Jesus, the love of God can be perfected in us. Keeping His word! Most of us have some idea of what it means to keep our word, to keep our own word that we may have given to someone else. The Scriptures invite us to keep the Word of Jesus.

Keeping the word means that we must know the word. So often we think that we can just read the words of Scripture in English and understand them. There is some truth in that, for sure. But we need to really study and to try to understand more and more the word of God and the teachings of our Lord Jesus.

Christ is risen from the dead. That is what these weeks after Easter keep trying to help us understand. Jesus came as the fulfillment of all that God had promised to His people, as the fulfillment of God’s word. To understand Jesus, we must understand all that speaks about Him in the Hebrew           Scriptures.

We don’t have to understand everything right at this moment. This is important for us to understand. Just as we cannot understand another human being in one instant, so neither can we understand our Lord quickly. We come to know Him by seeking Him, by struggling to understand His word and by striving to live as He did.

Faith requires patience on our part. Just as the early followers of Jesus did not recognize Him right away after He rose from the dead, neither can we always recognize the Lord. The first place where Jesus is recognized is in the breaking of the bread, the Holy Eucharist. But then He is understood more when we begin to struggle with His Word, the Holy Scriptures.

Today we can commit ourselves to knowing the Lord more, to taking the time to spend with His word, to spending time in His presence. When we say “Christ is risen,” we want to believe that with all our heart and soul. Christ is risen!

Peace and all good!

Fr. Valery Burusu

Parochial Administrator