Saturday in the Octave of Easter [266] Acts 4:13-21 Psalm 118:1+14-15ab, 16-18, 19-21 Mark 16:9-15

Celebrating Easter Daily Easter Prayer Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer Student Daily Reflection

I suppose that we all have different things that anchor our faith.  Surely the faith of the Disciples was fiercely tested by the crucifixion.  Here they were, a band of ordinary human beings -- "uneducated" is how they are described in the first reading — with their leader having undergone a painful and humiliating execution at the hands of the government.

Recall that they understood little of what Jesus had told them about the Resurrection.  Even after some of them had seen Jesus after the Resurrection doubt persisted among them, most notably with Thomas.

So how was it that this ragtag and now leaderless band persisted and allow Christianity to develop?  Under any ordinary human circumstances they would have tried to slip back to their old lives and hope that nobody recognized them (the temptation to which Peter succumbed three times before the cock crowed on that fateful morning).

Something beyond human understanding had to have kept them together, to keep their faith and to perform miracles.  That something had to have been the Resurrection.  Nothing less dramatic than that could have allowed them to preserver.  Now, almost 2,000 years later, that great gift allows us to continue to claim that victory over death that is the joy of the Easter season.