Several times I’ve had the
opportunity to go to Medjugorje on pilgrimage (this is the place in Bosnia Herzegovnia
where Our Lady has allegedly been appearing since 1981). Once when I was there I heard the visionary named
Ivanka describe the 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 one month 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 really proud
of her and to be obedient to what her grandmother told her. 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 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 lovely 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. They were left
in no doubt after that.
Another interesting thing that Jesus
did this time was to help the disciples understand that all that had
taken place—his suffering, death and resurrection—made sense.
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 he was saying 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 into God’s plan for the world. That
was something that took the disciples a while to get their heads
around, as suffering never makes sense to any of us. So Jesus
had to help them understand not only that he 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,
like 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 are 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 turning the evil work of people into good. But
for the most part we cannot see that. We are just faced with
each individual situation of suffering 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.
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 and it doesn't seem very pretty. 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.
'So you see how it was written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise again...'
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