Christian Mathematics: Jesus Multiplied

April 24 Easter Thursday

Acts 3:11-26; Psalm 8:2ab, 5,6-7,8-9; Luke 24:35-48

  

I used to wonder why Jesus didn’t say on earth after his resurrection, so we could all meet him. Then I did the math. 

If we settled for a three-day retreat with Jesus once in our life, in a group limited to fifty so everyone could have a personal interview; and if Jesus gave two retreats a week all year long, for him to reach just the 65+ million Catholics in the United States would take over ten thousand years!

So, like a grain of wheat that falls into the ground, Jesus rose multiplied. He rises in every person who “becomes Christ” through Baptism (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 795). We are his body. Each of us says with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me”(Galatians 2:20). We can meet Jesus, talk with him, serve and be served by him in each other. If we believe in the resurrection.

True, no one is perfectly Jesus. Even Paul “saw in his members another law at war with the law of his mind” (Romans 7:23). But in the measure that we are responsive to the Spirit poured out in our hearts, Jesus acts with us, in us and through us as in his own body on earth.

 PRAY: Lord, act with me, act in me, act through me.

PRACTICE: Look for the Spirit in everyone.