Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Parish recently issued the following announcement.

Join your fellow parishioners on Thursdays, 9:30am or 6:45pm in the Notre Dame classroom. Bring your Bible and a smile. A commentary text is available for purchase. Look over the series titles; plan to come!

This eight week session breaks open the themes of the power of the Holy Spirit, the call to evangelization, the necessity of a Christian community and the need for reconciliation. Each chapter provides a scriptural text plus commentary, reflective questions and a call to action.

What is the resurrection of the Christ? Two millennia have not wavered in defining it as the miraculous work of the Trinity in which “the three divine persons act as one” [CCC 648]. The Messianic claims about Jesus are authentic. He is both Lord and Christ. His dying and rising becomes for humankind the means to our redemption. As Romans 4:25 confirms, this salvation includes the forgiveness of sin as well as the outpouring of justifying or sanctifying grace. Thus, the miracle of Easter morning never leaves the believer in Our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Jesus did not resurrect as a ghost or a spirit. It is physical and bodily. His appearances to his disciples reveal the same crucified body, the same flesh laid in the borrowed tomb. Jesus shows his wounded hands and side and shares a meal with his frightened followers. His living body still requires nourishment.

Nonetheless, Jesus enters, exits closed and locked rooms, appearing and disappearing at will. The natural laws of this planet, although created by him, do not apply to him as he passed from death to his glorified state. His physical body experiences no limits, not of time or of space. Jesus, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, gifts that same spirit to his faithful ones when Christ returns to sit at the right hand of the Almighty Father.

St. Paul, in 1st Corinthians 15, sums up the monumental significance of this singular action, “But if there is not resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised: if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”

So, take a closer look at Jesus’ resurrection appearances. Contemplate with a fresh heart his final words as “Go and make disciples of all nations” and “Do you love me?” Experience the zeal and fearlessness of the apostles as Christ’s post-resurrection appearances cast away doubt and rekindle the joy of his living presence among them.

Original source can be found here.

Source: Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Parish