Thursday within Easter Octave – 16th April 2020 — Gospel: Luke 24, 35-48
God’s fundamental plan
The second part of this narrative emphasizes the necessity of Jesus’ suffering and resurrection in God’s plan. Jesus is the heart of the ancient scriptures. He is the fulfillment of everything written about him “in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms”. Now Jesus opens the mind of the disciples by opening the scriptures to them. In light of the resurrection, the disciples can now understand how the whole of the Old Testament teachings fit together as promise and are completed in the dying and rising of Jesus the Messiah. He summarizes God’s fundamental plan as revealed in scripture with three infinitives: to suffer, to rise and to proclaim. The first two of these elements of God’s plan have just been completed. The last remains for the disciples to carry out. Jesus then commissions his disciples for the decisive role they are to play in the new and final phase of salvation history. They are to be witnesses to Jesus Christ, proclaiming repentance and forgiveness, beginning in Jerusalem and extending to the entire world.
