20 April 2017
Thursday in the Octave of Easter
Jesus wants to prove to the Apostles that He is not a ghost. We see this concern not just in this passage of Luke’s but in multiple passages throughout the Gospels. Both Jesus and the evangelists want us to know that Jesus still has a physical body. He can still be seen. He can still be touched. And, He can still eat. Everything we can do with our bodies, Jesus can still do with His—except that He is no longer bound by our limitations. Material reality has been glorified and drawn even closer to God than it had been before.
Often, when we think of religious experiences, we think of being lifted out of our bodies, and no longer having the same concerns for the material world. On one level, this makes sense, as Christianity reminds us that life is about more than the material world. But we are also reminded that life is not opposed to the material world. Jesus did not rise from the dead to overcome physical existence, but to glorify it. As we go about our day-to-day lives, then, whatever we are doing, we can ask ourselves whether what we are doing helps to glorify material reality, or just push matter even further away from God.