After Jesus had appeared to Mary Magdalene and gave orders so that His disciples may leave for Galilee and after He encountered two of them on the road to Emmaus, finally the Lord apeared to the group meeting to eliminate their doubts and to strengthen their faith.

The community vacillated. The persecutions were on the horizon. The first enthusiasm diminished, the members are tired of the road and losing sight of the victorious message of Easter. Death appears stronger than life, oppression than liberation, sin than grace. Then Jesus appeared and said to them: “Peace be with you!”

The Lord proves to them His authentic Resurrection and confirms to them in peace. He is peace  in its fullness. And so that His Words do not remain only “in the air”, He showed them his hands, his side and his torn feet.

“See my hands, and my feet: It is I! Touch me and see! A ghost does not have flesh, nor bones, as you are seeing that I have them.” These words indicate that Jesus presented Himself as a normal man, with the same characteristics that he had in mortal life that the disciples so well knew. Therefore, we can translated freely as “I am the same that you know, and not another person that you are seeing.”

If these words have some historical sense, it is in the manifestation that Jesus is living that the death did not conquer him, that life from beyond can have moments in which it appears as life before, as it followed that life and was a continuation. Over the mode of thinking of some theologians, those that say that the resurrection is a form of life that is only spiritual, we see as Jesus manifested himself in a living body and there was no sense in affirming that only the spirit lives and the body destroys itself and does not reach the new life.

As the Catechism says, it is impossible to interpret the resurrection of Christ outside of the physical order and not recognize it as a historical fact, for the resurrected body of Jesus is the same that was martyred and crucified carrying the marks of His Passion. It did not constitute a return to terrestial life as was the case of Lazarus, seeing that His body possessed the new properties that go beyond time and space.

Jesus passes a state of death for another reality. He participates in divine life in the state of His glory, of a way that Paul could call Christ the “Celestial Man” It is therefore that He has the power of transmitting to us true peace. Thus as yesterday, Jesus today, continues saying: “Peace be with you!”

The invite to touch – not only to see – indicates that the present body before the disciples has the physical aspects or could be conformed to the physical laws, to the will of the Resurrected. The wounds, much more than the face, were marks that determined, definitively, the reality of the person in front of them. If there was a lack of some test to certify that this was the real Jesus, then, he hate a portion of the fish in front of the men.

It appears that the Evangelist wanted to refute all possible doubt. Even then, there existed many such as Thomas, here called not as an apostle but as an unbeliever. Therefore we can affirm that there exist many “Thomases” that do not believe because they have not seen.

Before the scandal of the cross, that no epoch was much better than today, it was necessary that He,  beyond His presence, proved to be conformed to the Scriptures. the road of God consist, as Paul affirmed, in showing that the “foolishness of God is much wiser than that of men, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength” (1Cor 1:25)

That our major hope maybe to hear the Word and to welcome the presence of the Master newly among the disciples; not more than a human body, but with a glorious body.

Somos chamados, na liturgia, a mergulharmos numa experiência íntima com o Ressuscitado que nos diz: “A paz esteja convosco!”

We are called in the liturgy, to plunge into the intimate experience with the Ressurection that says to us “Peace be with you!”

translated from Portuguese