Easter Thursday | Thursday 21 April 2022

Today is Easter Thursday, the 21st of April.
The nuns of Mary, Queen of Apostles, sing the hymn Jesu dulcis memoria. Sweet is the very thought of Jesus; giving true joy to the heart. But sweeter than the sweetest honey, is his very Presence.
Jesu dulcis memoria
dans vera cordis gaudia:
sed super mel et omnia
ejus dulcis praesentia.
Nil canitur suavius,
nil auditur jucundius,
nil cogitatur dulcius,
quam Jesus Dei Filius.
Jesu, spes paenitentibus,
quam pius es petentibus!
quam bonus te quaerentibus!
sed quid invenientibus?
Nec lingua valet dicere,
nec littera exprimere:
expertus potest credere,
quid sit Jesum diligere.
Sis, Jesu, nostrum gaudium,
qui es futurus praemium:
sit nostra in te gloria,
per cuncta semper saecula.
Amen.


The sweet memory of Jesus
Giving true joy to the heart:
But more than honey and all things
His sweet presence.
Nothing more delightful is sung,
Nothing more pleasing heard,
Nothing sweeter thought,
Than Jesus, the Son of God.
O Jesus, hope of the penitent,
How gracious you are to those who ask
How good to those who seek you;
But what [are you] to those who find?
No tongue may tell,
No letter express;
He who has experience of it can believe
What it is to love Jesus.
O Jesus, may you be our joy,
You who are our future reward.
May our glory be in you
Throughout all eternity.
Amen


Today’s reading is from the Gospel of Luke.
Luke 24:35-48
Then the two disciples told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

Yesterday we heard the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Today we see what happened after they ran back to Jerusalem and re-joined the other followers of Jesus. If you were in that room, how might you have reacted when Jesus himself suddenly appears?
Jesus seems anxious to demonstrate to them that he is not a ghost, but a flesh and blood human being. Why do you think that he would have thought that this was an important thing to do?

As the passage is read again, notice how Jesus uses the Hebrew scriptures to help explain all that has happened to him.
You might ask the risen Lord, in these final minutes of prayer, to explain the scriptures to you when you pray with them, as you are doing now, just as he explained them to these first followers.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.