What the risen Christ did when he met all the Apostles together
Why did the risen Christ insist on 'Peace,' and eat in front of his Disciples?
Why did the risen Christ insist on 'Peace,' and eat in front of his Disciples?
Editor’s Notes
In this Part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ bestowed peace, joy, and sacramental power on the Apostles before nightfall
That the Resurrection was not only shown, but sealed into the Church’s life by his word
Why the gift of absolution was the final triumph of divine mercy on Easter Day.
He shows us that the risen Lord crowned his victory by entrusting the remission of sins to his Apostles.
Easter Day
The Passage of Our Lord to the Father—Chapter XIV
St. Matt. xxviii. 2-15; St. Mark xvi. 2-13; St. Luke xxiv. 1-43; St. John xx. 1-29.
Story of the Gospels, § 173-177
Burns and Oates, London, 1892
Succession of manifestations
All these manifestations seem to succeed one to the other naturally and almost accidentally, but the end and issue of all of them was that by the nightfall of the first Easter Day the belief in the Resurrection of our Lord was firmly established in the Body of the Church, the chief pastor who had been made its appointed head, the governing community of the Apostles, and in scores of individual souls of every class of the little community.
All this had been brought about by the personal action of our Lord Himself, passing quietly from one to another, and using in each case the means of persuasion, and finally of conviction, which He knew to be suitable. The action of our Lord seems in some respects to remind us of the manner in which He brought to Himself one after another the first disciples, one by a direct call from Himself, another by a word or two of the Blessed Baptist, another by the agency of a brother, another by the revelation to him of what seemed to him unknown. The grace of God which worked so powerfully in these first converts, was no doubt equally active and efficient, equally delicate, and adjusted to the hearts and needs of each individual soul in both cases.
But now we have to follow our Lord to the end of His task, so to call it, on the Sunday afternoon, when He found the whole body of the Apostles collected, with a single exception, and conferred on the whole Apostolic body the great gift, which may be said, with but few exceptions, to have few boons of the merciful Saviour to compare with it in its power and magnificence—the power of the remission of sins by the application of the merits of the Precious Blood.
The history relates the boon of which we speak as a sequel to the communication made by the disciples on their return from Emmaus. They were still talking of these things, and:
‘Jesus stood in the midst of them, and said unto them, Peace be to you, it is I, fear not. But they being troubled and frighted, supposed that they saw a spirit. And He said to them, Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See My hands and feet, that it is I Myself, handle, and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see Me to have.
‘And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and feet. But while they yet believed not, and wondered for joy, He said, Have you here anything to eat? And they offered Him a piece of a broiled fish and a honeycomb. And when He had eaten before them, taking the remains, He gave to them.’
Joy of the disciples
‘The disciples therefore were glad when they saw the Lord.’
Such is the simple statement of St. John. We are not told whether the Beloved Disciple had had any special visit from our Lord, apart from those which have been chronicled, and he is not included by St. Paul among the list which is given of those favoured. We know that very early in the history of these manifestations, after the announcement of Magdalene, St. John has recorded of himself that he had arrived at the fulness of faith, and in that sense he had believed.
It may be that his close companionship with our Blessed Lady had won for him the precious gift of this fulness of faith, and so it may be to him that our Lord alluded in the word to St. Thomas, ‘Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’ It is the common thought that the words apply only to those who believe without the evidence of sight. But in cases like that of the Evangelist, who certainly believed without more than the evidence of the linen cloths, which he mentions, faith must have preceded sight, as it was no doubt with our Blessed Lady herself.
The Evangelist seems to give expression to the very frequent exuberance of joy of which the spiritual life has occasional experience, when the feeling of exulting joy seems to take possession of the heart, and quite lifts it up above earthly things. The Apostles had passed through very great darkness and storms, and their sadness had been excessive, so that we find our Lord almost reproaching them therewith. And now the reaction had set in, and they had their experience of the intensity of spiritual joy, as our Lord had promised them in the Cenacle—their joy no man was to take from them.
This became, as we know, a common and continual gift in the Church of the Apostolical Christians, to an extent which we hardly appreciate rightly, and without attempting to describe it or to trace it to its true sources in the character of the times in which they lived, it is enough here to note the impression which the fact seems to have made on so very reserved a writer as St. John. It is noticeable that the great gift of which the words which now follow tell us, should have been conferred on the Apostles at the time that their hearts were already overflowing with spiritual joy.
The mission to forgive sins
‘He said therefore to them again, Peace be unto you. As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you.’
The repetition of the salutation, ‘Peace be unto you,’ does not of necessity imply that there was any pause in time between the words with which the last sentence concluded and the beginning of a new subject by our Lord. It may have been in order that the Apostles might note the beginning of a new solemn and sacramental act on His part.
We are not told that there was any such break actually, but it was already perhaps somewhat late in the evening, and we are not told that our Lord did not on this occasion, as may frequently have been His practice when giving great and signal instructions on such subjects as that of the sacraments of the New Law to the Apostles, add other words by way of fuller instruction or explanation to the few words which are recorded by the Evangelists. We are certain indeed that the whole of the doctrine is conveyed in what is related to us, but the words do not preclude further explanations, as has been said. The repetition of the salutation was enough to arrest the attention of the Apostles, and to suggest to them that what was now to be spoken of was something new and of importance, to be listened to with devotion and reverence, independently of what had before been said.
In point of fact, we know it to have been the Divine institution of the great Sacrament of Penance, fraught with inestimable boons of the goodness and mercy of God, and chosen on account, as we may think, of the very precious treasures and graces now poured forth, to be in a sense the last of the gifts of our Lord to the Church which He had purchased with His Blood, bestowed solemnly upon her on the day of His great triumph over all the powers of Hell, labouring to hinder the complete accomplishment of our salvation by means of her work in His Name in the world.
Certainly, it is difficult to imagine a more complete outpouring of Divine love than the perfect cancelling of human sins by the absolute obliteration of the whole guiltiness contained in them. But it was something more even than that, when we remember the infinite price at which our Lord purchased this obliteration of sin, and the extreme simplicity and condescension with which He has placed the application of the healing power contained for this purpose in the hands of men like the guilty sinners themselves, instead of the great princes of His Kingdom, such as the Holy Angels.
In the next part, Fr Coleridge reflects further on Our Lord’s institution of the sacrament of penance.
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Easter Day
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