Tuesday, April 11 : Saint Augustine
This Gospel passage… shows us in truth who is the Messiah and who the Church…, that we might understand well which Bride it is that this divine Bridegroom has chosen and who is the Bridegroom of this holy Bride… On this page we can read their deed of espousals… You have learnt that Christ is the Word, God’s Utterance, united to a human soul and human body… Here, the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost; they did not believe that the Lord had a real body. But since the Lord understood the danger of such thoughts, he made haste to snatch them out of their hearts…: «Why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.» Yet you, with these same crazy thoughts, strongly oppose the rule of faith you have received… Christ is truly the Word, the only-begotten Son equal to the Father, united to a truly human soul and a real body, clean of all sin. This is the body that died, the body that rose again, this body was fastened to the cross, this body laid in the tomb, this body is seated in the heavens. Our Lord wished to persuade his disciples that what they were seeing was truly bone and flesh… Why did he want to convince me of this truth? Because he knew just how much it was to my own good to have faith in it and how much I had to lose if I did not. You too, then, have faith: it is he, the Bridegroom! Now listen to what was said about the Bride…: «The Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, is to be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.» This is the Bride…: the Church is spread all over the earth and has taken all peoples to her heart… The apostles saw Christ and believed in what they did not see, the Church. We, on our part, see the Church; so let us believe in Jesus Christ, whom we do not see, and so, by holding on to what we see, we shall come to him whom as yet we do not see.
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
