One question that comes to most of our minds at some stage, is what the next world will be like. Will we know each other? Is it similar to our life on earth, except without suffering? What will we do all day? My grandmother, who died at the age of 96, used to say that she didn’t like the expression ‘rest in peace,’ as it implied we would be in some kind of a sleep, or certainly not very active. She said, ‘I don’t want to rest in peace! I want to be alive!’ I think she had the right idea. All of us want to be as alive as possible, but without all the struggles we have to endure here.
Several times I’ve had the opportunity to go to Medjugorje (the place in Bosnia Herzegovina where Our Lady has allegedly been appearing since 1981) on pilgrimage. Once when I was there, I heard the visionary named Ivanka describe an experience she had when Our Lady told her she would no longer be appearing to her on a daily basis, but only once a year. Before the vision finished she asked Ivanka if there was anything she would like her to do for her. Ivanka asked Our Lady if she could see her mother again. Her mother had died just a few months before the apparitions had begun. In Ivanka’s own words she says that just after she asked this of Our Lady, suddenly her mother was in front of her and she was able to talk to her and hug her. Her mother told her that she was very proud of her and that she should be obedient to her grandmother. At the end of this testimony Ivanka said, ‘I am living proof that heaven exists. I saw my mother and spoke with her several months after she died.’ To listen to Ivanka recall this experience in her own words was very moving and watching her tell this story it is certainly hard to doubt it.
In today’s Gospel we hear another account of Jesus suddenly appearing to the disciples after the resurrection. To help them believe that what they were seeing was real Jesus does a beautiful and very human thing. He eats something in front of them. He takes a piece of fish from them and puts it in his mouth, chews it and swallows it. He wanted them to be convinced that they weren’t dreaming. This helped them to believe that this was the same Jesus with real flesh and blood, that they had lived with for three years, a bit like Ivanka being allowed to speak with and hug her mother. The fact that Jesus took the food from them is important. If they just saw Jesus eating something in a vision, that wouldn’t have any particular significance, but the fact that they gave him a piece of food which He ate, shows that He was fully alive and they weren’t just seeing a vision. They interacted with him. This helped them to believe.
Another interesting thing that Jesus did this time was to help the disciples understand that everything that had taken place—his suffering, death and resurrection—made sense and was actually meant to happen. He showed them that the prophets had foretold it and that the Scriptures referred to it and then he said to them, ‘So you see how it was written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise again...’ In other words, that all the events that had taken place, which were so horrifying and disillusioning for them, had their place. They were meant to happen and they fitted perfectly into God’s plan for the world. That was something that took the disciples a while to understand, as suffering never makes sense to any of us. Jesus had to help them understand not only that he really was alive, but that all that had taken place was meant to happen.
All of us are continually faced with difficult situations of suffering. Sometimes it is suffering that we ourselves go through, such as sickness, or relationships breaking up, and sometimes it is watching people dear to us suffer, such as when someone we love dies. It never seems to make sense and it always seems unfair. We find ourselves crying out, ‘How can God do this to me? Why does God allow this?’ When I worked in a hospital as a chaplain, I remember often hearing people ask me, ‘Why has God done this to me?’ So often we cannot make sense of why we have to suffer and we may even see it as a punishment.
Even though we don’t have a direct answer to this question, what Jesus says to his disciples in this Gospel is a help, because it reminds us that everything that happens fits into God’s bigger plan. The struggles we go through don’t make sense to us and sometimes they may even be caused by the wrong-doing of others. How could this be part of God’s plan, we ask? The point is that God can bring good out of every situation, even situations of evil, but for the most part we cannot see that. We are just faced with each individual situation of suffering, which doesn’t make sense to us and that is hard. However, the Lord is telling us that there is a bigger picture which makes sense of everything that happens. When we die we will then see that picture and it will all make sense to us.
When you find yourself asking, how can any good possibly come out of a situation? Ask this question, ‘How could any good possibly come out of an illegal and unjust torturing and killing of an innocent man? And yet it changed history forever. The crucifixion happened because of the evil choices of people. Greed for money, hatred and jealousy of Jesus. It wasn’t about justice, it was about hatred. And yet that event, brought about by human evil, played an infinitely important part in God’s plan for the world, so that we could have life after death and be with the people we love again.
St. Pius of Pietrelcina—better known as Padre Pio—used the analogy of a tapestry. He said that our life is like a tapestry in God’s hands. We are looking at it from the back, like a child looking up at it while her mother works at it. All the child can see is the various bits of string hanging out, but seen from the other side, the Creator’s side, it is a beautiful work of art. So much of what we go through makes no sense to us, but the Lord asks us to trust that He knows what He is doing. One day when we see the tapestry from the right side, we will see the beautiful picture that the Lord has created.
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| Tapestry |
To help us through this time of trials on earth, Jesus has made himself present to us, especially in the Eucharist. We want to know that God is with us to help us and He is. God gives himself to us in the most intimate way possible, by giving us his very body and blood, which we can receive every day if we wish. God is not watching us ‘from a distance,’ but as close to us as we could ask for. That’s why receiving the Eucharist is so important and how blessed we are to recognize what God has given us. God also continually speaks to us through the Scriptures, helping us to make sense of all the crazy things that we are faced with. So we can never say that we are alone, even though it sometimes feels that way.
It was so important that the disciples believed that Jesus really had risen from the dead, that death was not the end of his life, but a transformation. Up to that time people did not have as clear a picture of life after death as we have. It means that when we die, we can also step into the next world too and be with the people we love once more, where we will no longer suffer, but experience the fulfilment that all of us long for. That is what the Gospel is all about: life. That’s why Jesus told the Apostles to go out and tell everyone about what had happened and what it means. That is why the preaching of the Gospel is so important and that everyone should hear it. Noone has to believe or accept it, but we should know what has happened, what God has done for us and what awaits us if we choose it.
So you see how it was written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise again... You are witnesses to this.
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