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Easter Season · Third Sunday of Easter · Year B

Luke 24:35-48

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

Christ Appearing to the Apostles after the Resurrection, Szymon Czechowicz
Christ Appearing to the Apostles after the Resurrection, Szymon Czechowicz, about 1758National Museum, Kraków
The risen Christ standing in the open with one hand raised and the other held out, the wound showing under his arm, while the apostles go down on their knees in front of him and the ones behind crowd forward to see.While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you. 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.Szymon CzechowiczCzechowicz, a Polish painter of the eighteenth century who trained in Rome and brought its light home with him.National Museum, KrakówThe National Museum in Kraków.National Museum, Kraków

Overview & Insights

“Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see.” (Luke 24:39)

This passage not only brings Luke’s Gospel narrative, and especially its developing resurrection motif, to a triumphant conclusion, but also prepares for the taking up of the story in Luke’s second volume, Acts. The summary of the gospel message in 24:46–48, the cryptic promise of “power from on high” in 24:49, Jesus’s ascension in 24:51 (more fully narrated in Acts 1:1–11), and the communal life of the believers in Jerusalem in 24:52–53) will be developed in the early chapters of Acts. The story of Jesus is now becoming the story of the Jesus movement. The most obvious difference between these verses and Acts is the lack here of any indication of the passage of time (forty days [Acts 1:3]) between Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. In bringing his Gospel to an appropriately “orderly” (1:3) literary conclusion, Luke apparently feels no need to be pedantic about the chronological data.

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Why does the risen Jesus eat fish in front of the disciples?

To show that his resurrection is bodily and real, not a ghost or vision. He invites them to touch his wounded hands and feet, eats a piece of broiled fish before them, then opens their minds to understand the Scriptures and names them witnesses.

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