+CHRIST’S LIVING PRESENCE AMONG US 2nd Sunday of Easter 2025
Our readings today stir up within us a living sense of Christ’s living presence among us. Our sense of time and place seems to evaporate. We are left with a living sense, as the book of Revelation tells us, of what has happened, what is happening and what will happen from now to all eternity.
Our gospel presents us with Christ’s first disciples gathered right after the Resurrection, the doors locked for fear of the Jewish authorities. Suddenly Jesus stands in their midst as he stands in our midst and says to us, “Peace be with you.” He shows them his hands and his side, leaving no doubt that it is He who was crucified just a few days before this.
Jesus then breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” Though we celebrate Pentecost weeks after Easter Sunday, did it not take place at this very time for the first disciples. And isn’t it happening as often as we open our minds and hearts to Christ’s living presence in each of our lives?
After all, as St Paul has told us, this love has countless opportunities. For if I am patient, if I am kind and not jealous, if I am not inflated or rude, am not quick-tempered, do not brood over injury, do not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoice with the truth, then Christ’s love reigns in my heart and I am his living presence for others.
Just as Jesus sent the first disciples, is he not sending each one of us gathered here this morning to be living witnesses of his loving and forgiving presence! We have only to believe that Jesus, the Son of God is right here among us. By this faith, we also are called each day to participate in his very own life and then to share it with all those around us.
We all have the difficult moments like St Thomas did of whom we just heard, in believing in our risen Lord. We have witnessed in our own lives, in the lives of friends and relatives, in the lives of countless other men and women the mystery of human suffering. I know that today, I question how Christ could be present in what’s happening to the Palestinians in Gaza or in the terrible wars going on between Ukraine and Russia and in other parts of the world? How can Christ possibly be present in the millions of starving or neglected in various countries? And yet we know that he is, for as he himself has said, what we do to the least of our brothers and sisters we do to him.
Pope Francis was a wonderful example of one whose faith allowed him to see clearly Christ’s living presence in the marginalized and abandoned and isn’t this why we have just seen after his death such wide acclaim.
As we heard from the Book of Acts, the sick and those disturbed by unclean spirits were carried out into the streets on cots and mats, so that when Peter came by, his shadow might fall on some of them and they were all cured.
Each of our own lives is to be the vehicle of this loving presence of Christ and we all have many opportunities each day to allow this to happen. With all that is going on in our Church and world, this loving and healing presence of Christ is ever more urgent if we are to have a future, a future that radiates the transforming power of the risen Lord.
The bread and wine consecrated on this altar this morning is what is to take place all day long in each one of our lives. As we allow the Holy Spirit to overshadow us, we become living members of Christ’s own body, the Church. We may think of our lives as all too ordinary and unimportant, but the opposite is true because of Christ’s risen and living presence in each of our hearts.
Acts 5:12-16; Rev 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19; John 20:19-31