Thursday in the Octave of Easter

Lectionary: 264

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.

The Evangelists, like the prophets before them, never forget the supreme irony that Jesus was condemned to death by the Holy City of Jerusalem. Our Palm Sunday rites accentuate that irony as, first, we welcome him to the City; and then shout, "Crucify him; crucify him!" 

But it was there in Saint Matthew's Christmas story of Herod's attempt to kill the child. And Saint Luke's Simeon had described the virgin's infant as a sign of contradiction. From his birth to his death and resurrection nothing about Jesus made sense by the terms of this world. 

In this morning's first reading Saint Peter does not hesitate to remind the Holy City of that supreme paradox when the citizens demanded that a murderer be released in place of the Author of Life. 

Today's Christians often join the secular chorus when they suggest that Jesus's resurrection was more spiritual than physical. Spiritual is safe, manageable, open to interpretation, virtual. Physical is real, political, historical, in your face, like popes, cardinals, and bishops. And Gothic cathedrals and cemeteries and shelters for unwed mothers that cost our time, talent, and treasure. 

We often quarrel with the physical, saying it shouldn't be like that; it should be like this. As if our shoulds make any difference in the real world. 

Before they could embrace the faith that Peter announced, the people of Jerusalem had to remember their betrayal. The Apostle spelled it out for them and for us: 

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.