Several
times I’ve had the opportunity to go to Medjugorje (the place in
Bosnia Herzegovnia where Our Lady has allegedly been appearing since
1981) on pilgrimage. 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 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 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 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 not only talks to them and makes sense of what happened to him, but he also eats with them. 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 everything 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
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 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, 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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