For eight days the Church celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead! On this Friday within the Octave in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles we hear a continuation of the events that took place at the time of Pentecost. We read these accounts now, during the celebration of Easter Day, because the two feasts are intimately tied with one another.
Today, Peter and John are imprisoned because they were preaching and teaching the people about Jesus and his resurrection from the dead after they were instruments used by Jesus to heal a crippled man.
By what power or by what name have done this? the leaders, elders and scribes asked the two apostles? It was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed. He is the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. THERE IS NO SALVATION THROUGH ANYONE ELSE, NOR IS THERE ANY OTHER NAME UNDER HEAVEN, GIVEN TO THE HUMAN RACE BY WHICH WE ARE TO BE SAVED!
It is very clear what Peter was saying to them and to us – all of us in the whole world today! JESUS IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE!
In the gospel passage the Risen Jesus appears to his disciples again – this time as they are winding up a fishless night of work – and he tells them to cast their nets again: to the right: to where God has placed waiting fish: and they caught a huge load; this was a figure of Peter and the Apostles casting the nets of their teaching and preaching into the world at the precise point where the Father had prepared the people he had chosen to be his own: so that they could be caught in great quantities! The fish on the left are those who never did and never will want anything to do with God – or with happiness – or with life forever – there are such pitiable fish in the sea!
Peter and the Apostles take the message that there is no salvation in anyone else other than Jesus into the world – and those who are thirsting for happiness, for community, for life hear the message and react to it: they respond with FAITH, they accept the teaching, they are baptized and they begin a newness of life that is quite amazing! And the communion of saints the Church – is born!
We are such people! We are Church! We thank God for having preached the word to our families, our parents – who passed it on to us! May we do all we can do to pass it on to a new generation of Catholic Christians!
This is the Day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it!
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