April 9, 2026
Thursday in the Octave of Easter
Lectionary: 264
Reading
1
As the crippled
man who had been cured clung to Peter and John,
all the people hurried in amazement toward them
in the portico called “Solomon’s Portico.”
When Peter saw this, he addressed the people,
“You children of Israel, why are you amazed at this,
and why do you look so intently at us
as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety?
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,
the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus
whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence,
when he had decided to release him.
You denied the Holy and Righteous One
and asked that a murderer be released to you.
The author of life you put to death,
but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses.
And by faith in his name,
this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong,
and the faith that comes through it
has given him this perfect health,
in the presence of all of you.
Now I know, brothers and sisters,
that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did;
but God has thus brought to fulfillment
what he had announced beforehand
through the mouth of all the prophets,
that his Christ would suffer.
Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away,
and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment
and send you the Christ already appointed for you, Jesus,
whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration
of which God spoke through the mouth
of his holy prophets from of old.
For Moses said:
A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you
from among your own kin;
to him you shall listen in all that he may say to you.
Everyone who does not listen to that prophet
will be cut off from the people.
“Moreover, all the prophets who spoke,
from Samuel and those afterwards, also announced these days.
You are the children of the prophets
and of the covenant that God made with your ancestors
when he said to Abraham,
In your offspring all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
For you first, God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you
by turning each of you from your evil ways.”
Responsorial
Psalm
R.(2ab) O
Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
or:
R. Alleluia.
O LORD, our Lord,
how glorious is your name over all the earth!
What is man that you should be mindful of him,
or the son of man that you should care for him?
R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
or:
R. Alleluia.
You have made him little less than the angels,
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under his feet.
R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
or:
R. Alleluia.
All sheep and oxen,
yes, and the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, the fishes of the sea,
and whatever swims the paths of the seas.
R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
or:
R. Alleluia.
Sequence
-- optional
Victimae
paschali laudes
Christians, to the
Paschal Victim
Offer your
thankful praises!
A Lamb the sheep redeems;
Christ, who
only is sinless,
Reconciles
sinners to the Father.
Death and life have contended in that combat stupendous:
The Prince
of life, who died, reigns immortal.
Speak, Mary, declaring
What you
saw, wayfaring.
“The tomb of Christ, who is living,
The glory of
Jesus’ resurrection;
bright angels attesting,
The shroud
and napkin resting.
Yes, Christ my hope is arisen;
to Galilee
he goes before you.”
Christ indeed from death is risen, our new life obtaining.
Have mercy,
victor King, ever reigning!
Amen.
Alleluia.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia,
alleluia.
This is the day the LORD has made;
let us be glad and rejoice in it.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
The disciples of
Jesus recounted what had taken place along the way,
and how they had come to recognize him in the breaking of bread.
While they were still speaking about this,
he stood in their midst and said to them,
"Peace be with you."
But they were startled and terrified
and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Then he said to them, "Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.
Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you can see I have."
And as he said this,
he showed them his hands and his feet.
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed,
he asked them, "Have you anything here to eat?"
They gave him a piece of baked fish;
he took it and ate it in front of them.
He said to them,
"These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,
that everything written about me in the law of Moses
and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled."
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
And he said to them,
"Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040926.cfm
Commentary on Acts 3:11-26
Immediately after
the dramatic cure of the beggar who was “lame from birth” in the Temple, Peter
takes the opportunity to address the crowds which had gathered, to explain the
meaning of what they have just witnessed.
The scene takes
place at “Solomon’s Portico”. This was a porch along the inner side of the wall
enclosing the outer court, with rows of 27-foot high stone columns and a roof
of cedar. So it was a roofed structure—somewhat similar to a Greek stoa.
There was a common, but mistaken, belief that it dated back to Solomon’s time.
The message that
Peter now gives the amazed crowd gathering around is similar to other addresses
in the early Church and contains: 1) an explanation of what is happening; 2)
the gospel of Jesus Christ—his death, resurrection and glorification; and 3) a
call to repentance and change of life, symbolised by baptism.
First, Peter makes
clear that the healing that has just taken place before their eyes is not by
his own power or that of his companion, John. They are not to be gaped at as
having supernatural powers. What has been done has been through the power of
Jesus, who has been empowered by the God they all believe in, the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Jesus is the one
his hearers “handed over” to Pilate. Here again we have this ‘handing over’, a
phrase which runs like a refrain through the Gospel. And he whom they handed
over was the “Holy and Righteous One”, indicating Jesus’ special relationship
to the Father and his sinlessness—in stark contrast to the guilt of the
murderous Barabbas.
Pilate was only
too anxious to let Jesus go, being aware of his innocence, but he gave in to
the demands of the crowd and yielded to their choice of a convicted murderer,
Barabbas. To the crowd, Peter says:
…you killed the
author of life…
While Barabbas had
taken away life and was freed, Jesus—the source of life—was condemned to death.
The sequence of the Easter Sunday Mass says:
Dux vitae
mortuus regnat vivus.
Literally
translated this means: “The Leader of life, having died, reigns alive.”
Peter and his
companions are witnesses that Jesus was raised again. And it was in the name of
this same Jesus that the poor beggar has been restored to health and mobility.
God has “glorified
his servant” by Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. The word “servant” is
reminiscent of the Songs of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah (and which we read
early in Holy Week), especially Isaiah 52:13—53:12. Jesus himself spoke of
being a servant when he washed his disciples’ feet and when he said that he had
come to serve and not to be served. All of this did not quite fit the image of
the kind of Messiah the Jews were expecting.
And it is by faith
in this very Jesus that the poor beggar, “lame from birth” and well known to
the crowds who came regularly to the Temple, has been “made strong”:
…faith that is
through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.
Peter excuses his
hearers (as Jesus himself did), saying they did not fully realise at the time
what they were doing. Yet, the suffering of the Christ had long been foretold
by the prophets. The early Christians saw the suffering and death of Jesus
clearly indicated in Old Testament prophecies. The Jews, however, did not
expect a suffering and dying Messiah—quite the opposite. They saw in Isaiah’s
Servant Songs their own suffering as a people.
Now it is not too
late for them to ‘repent’ (there is metanoia again), that is,
radically to change their ways and thus have their sin taken away. To ‘repent’
is not just to express sorrow; it involves re-establishing one’s close
relationship with God and submitting totally to his Way. The nearest English
equivalent is ‘con-version’, a ‘turning round’, which means, of course, a
‘turning towards’.
Jesus, after all,
is the prophet who was foretold by Moses, who, Peter tells the crowd, had said:
The Lord your God
will raise up for you from your own people a prophet like me. You must listen
to whatever he tells you.
This is a loose
quotation from Deuteronomy (18:15). In fact, at the time of Jesus, some Jews
expected a unique prophet to come in fulfilment of this text. So early
Christianity applied this tradition and text to Jesus, especially where
Christian teaching seemed to diverge from traditional Judaism.
And indeed, says
Peter, every prophet from Samuel down predicted what is now taking place before
their eyes. Samuel was one of the earliest of the prophets and the one who
anointed David, Jesus’ ancestor, as king. So the Jews in his audience are the
heirs of the prophets’ messages; they are the heirs to the covenant first made
way back with Abraham:
…and by your
offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves,
because you have obeyed my voice. (Gen
22:18)
It is time now for
the people to acknowledge this sacred covenant, made new through Jesus Christ,
and they will do that by their accepting Jesus as their Saviour and abandoning
their sinful ways to walk the Way of Jesus. Exactly the same applies to us.
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Commentary on Luke 24:35-48
We pick up from
yesterday’s story of the disciples going to Emmaus. Back in Jerusalem they
share their experience of the risen Jesus with their comrades who have also
heard that Jesus has appeared to Simon Peter.
Suddenly, Jesus
himself appears in their midst. The fact that he comes suddenly, although the
doors were locked, indicates that his presence is now of a different kind.
He wishes them
peace. It is the ordinary Jewish greeting of Shalom, but one which
has special meaning in this Easter context. Before his Passion Jesus had told
his disciples,
Peace I leave
with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. (John 14:27)
The peace of the
Risen Jesus is fully a Messianic blessing.
In spite of what
they had heard, they are terrified and think they are seeing a ghost. Jesus
asks them:
Why are you
frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?
He shows them his
pierced hands and feet. The Greeks mocked the idea of bodily resurrection, but
Luke emphasises the physical reality of Christ’s risen body, that is, the
wholeness of the person of the risen Jesus.
He invites them to
come and touch him. Ghosts do not have flesh and bones. As he shows them the
wounds in his hands and feet, their fear turns to a mixture of joy and utter
astonishment. They can’t believe their eyes. Jesus has to ask them to give him
something to eat. Ghosts don’t eat and Jesus is no ghost; he is no disembodied
soul. There is also an emphasis that death is not an ‘escape’ from the body,
but that the whole person goes into the next life.
Jesus then goes on
to explain, as he did with the Emmaus disciples, how all that had happened to
him was fully in harmony with, and the fulfilment of, the Law, the prophets and
psalms. Mentioning the three constituent parts of the Old Testament, Jesus
indicates that the Messiah was foretold through the whole of the Hebrew
Scriptures.
And out of
Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection comes the mission to proclaim
reconciliation with God through Jesus to the whole word. Jesus tells them:
You are
witnesses of these things.
It is their
mission to carry on the establishment of the Kingdom throughout the world. Or,
as it is put here:
…that
repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in [the Messiah’s] name to all
nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
The Kingdom is
being realised when people go through that process of radical conversion and
change of life (i.e. ‘repentance’—metanoia) which brings about a deep
reconciliation of each one with God, with all those around them, and with
themselves—when all divisions fall away, when fear and hostility are replaced
with a caring love for each other.
If we have not yet
done so, let us become part of that great enterprise today.
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Thursday, April 9, 2026
Easter Time
Opening Prayer
Almighty God and Father,
Jesus died for us on the cross and You raised
Him from the dead.
We have not seen the marks of the nails in His hands nor touched
the wound in His
side, but we believe that He is alive and present here among us.
Open our hearts to His word and let us touch Him in the bread of the Eucharist,
that He may raise us above our sins and change us into new people.
May we thus bear
witness to Your
risen Son, Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Luke 24: 35-48
The disciples of Jesus recounted what had taken place along the way, and how they
had come to recognize him in the breaking of bread. While
they were still speaking
about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you." But they were
startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Then he said to them, "Why are you troubled? And why do questions
arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet,
that it is I myself.
Touch me and see,
because a ghost
does not have
flesh and bones
as you can see I have."
And as he said this,
he showed them his hands and his feet. While
they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, "Have you anything here to
eat?" They gave him a piece of baked fish;
he took it and ate it in front of them.
He said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about
me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened
their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said to them,
"Thus it is written that the Christ
would suffer and rise from the dead on the third
day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in
his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."
Reflection
In these days after
Easter, the Gospel
texts narrate the apparitions of Jesus. At the
beginning, in the first years
after the death
and the Resurrection of Jesus, the Christians were concerned with
defending the Resurrection through the apparitions. They themselves, the living community, were a great
apparition of the Risen Jesus. But in the measure in which the criticism of the
enemies against the faith in the Resurrection increased, and that internally, and as there arose criticism and doubts
concerning diverse functions
in the community (cf. 1 Co 1: 12), they began to recall
the apparitions of Jesus. There
are two types
of apparitions:
(a) those which stress the doubts and the resistance of the disciples
in believing in the Resurrection, and
(b) those who call attention to the orders
of Jesus to the disciples
– men and women – conferring
some mission to them.
The first ones respond
to criticisms from
the outside. These
show that Christians are not naïve and credulous persons who accept everything and
anything. Au contraire! They themselves had many doubts in believing in the Resurrection.
The others respond to the
criticism from within and establish the community functions and tasks, not on human qualities which are always
debatable, but on the
authority and orders
received from the Risen Jesus.
The apparitions of Jesus
in today’s Gospel put together
two different aspects:
the doubts of the disciples and the mission to announce and to forgive
received from Jesus.
•
Luke 24: 35: The summary
of the story of Emmaus.
Returning to Jerusalem, the two disciples found the
community together and they shared with them the experience that they had lived.
They told them what had happened along the road and how they recognized
Jesus in the breaking of the bread. The community gathered, and in turn, shared the apparition of Jesus to Peter. This was
a reciprocal sharing of the experience of the Resurrection, as it also happens
today when the communities gather to share and celebrate their faith, their
hope and their love.
•
Luke 24: 36-37: The apparition of Jesus causes great fright in the disciples. At this moment, Jesus becomes
present among them and says, “Peace be with
you!” This is the most frequent greeting of Jesus: “Peace be with you!” (Jn 14: 27; 16: 33; 20: 19, 21, 26). But the disciples, upon
seeing Jesus, were frightened and did not
recognize Him. Before
them is Jesus
in person, but they think
that they are seeing a ghost, a phantasm. They cannot believe it. It is
now the encounter between Jesus of Nazareth and the Risen Jesus.
•
Luke 24: 38-40:
Jesus helps them to overcome
fear and unbelief.
Jesus does two things to help the disciples overcome fear and unbelief. He shows them His hands and His feet, saying,
“It is I Myself!”, and tells them to touch His body saying, “A ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have!”
Jesus shows His hands
and feet because
on them is the sign of the nails (cf. Jn 20: 25-27).
The Risen Christ is Jesus of Nazareth, the same one who was nailed to the Cross
and not a phantasm Christ as the disciples imagined when they saw Him. He
orders them to touch His body, because the Resurrection is the Resurrection of
the whole person, body and soul. The Resurrection has nothing to do with the theory
of the immortality of the soul, which the Greeks taught.
•
Luke 24: 41-43: The other gesture to help them overcome unbelief. But it does not suffice!
Luke said that they could
not believe because
their joy was so
great that they became dumbfounded. Jesus asks them to give Him something to eat. They offer Him some fish and He eats before
them, to help them
to overcome doubt.
•
Luke 24: 44-47: A key to understanding the new significance of the Scripture. One of the greatest
difficulties of the first Christians was that of accepting the Crucified as the promised Messiah,
because the Law taught that a crucified person was a “person cursed by God” (Deut 21: 22-23). For this reason, it was important to know that Scripture had already announced that “Christ had to
suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that in His name, conversion
and forgiveness of sins would be preached to all peoples.” Jesus shows them
what had already been written in the Law of Moses, in the prophets and in the
psalms. Jesus risen from the dead, alive in their midst, becomes the key to
opening to them the total significance of Sacred Scripture.
•
Luke 24: 48:
You are witnesses of this. In this last
order is enclosed the whole mission of the Christian communities: to be witnesses to the Resurrection, in such a way that the love of God which accepts us and
forgives us will be manifested, and which
wants us to live in community as sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters with one another.
Personal Questions
•
Sometimes unbelief and doubt beset the heart and weaken
the certainty that faith gives us concerning the
presence of God in our life. Have you ever experienced this? How have you
overcome it?
•
Our mission is that of being witnesses to the love of
God revealed in Jesus. Am I a witness to this love?
•
Can I identify
those things in my life which cast doubt on my faith?
How do I defend against these attacks?
Concluding Prayer
What are human beings
that You spare
a thought for them, or the child
of Adam that You care for him? (Ps 8: 4)
