Thursday within Easter Octave : 4th April 2024

That Jesus is mistaken for a ghost by His own disciples suggests their human difficulty in understanding who their Master really is. Knowing their bewilderment, He asks them: “Why are you so agitated? Why are these doubts rising in your hearts?” These questions apply even today to us.

While we may not have the privilege of seeing the Lord face to face, of being invited to look at the tell-tale wounds on His hands and feet, of touching Him and being convinced that the Lord is neither ghost nor a figment of the imagination, we need to ask why we continue to wrestle with doubts about our Saviour’s existence, especially in times of crises. After all, faith is the belief in what the senses cannot perceive and the conviction in our being that God is real.

Ironically, it was more difficult for the disciples to make the mental leap from knowing Jesus as a human-being to knowing Him as the divine Son of God. It involved a paradigm shift that we today take in our stride, having been bestowed the gift of faith to accepting Christ, the beloved Son of God, our Saviour.

Let us not take our faith for granted but strive to deepen our trust in the One who invites us to be His witnesses.

Let us pray dear God, our Father, open our minds to understand that Christ Jesus, the Splendour of Your Word, is alive and present in our midst today.