Third Sunday of Easter
Evangelization: let start from family
While they were still speaking about this, he [Jesus]stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see …. And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them. 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 and in the prophets and 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 would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Lk 24,36-48
Today’s passage from the Gospel ends with these words: “You are witnesses of these things”. After Pentecost, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, goes out of the place where the apostles were hiding and starts his own apostolic life right from Jerusalem, as Master has ordered him: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses”(Acts 3,15). Together with Peter, the other apostles go out and in the city and begin their own testimony. This is the wonderful mission to which every believer is called and which will be carried out with the help of the Holy Spirit.When, thirty years ago, we started praying and meditating on the gospel together, in the morning, we also thought that this use should concern only familiar context, but, with the passing years, the Lord asked us to turn to the people outside, in order to be witness of what he told us. Honestly, we think we have done it in the simple ways which we were able to, but it was not enough. Then the Holy Spirit made us realize that we had to make our family experience public, writing a book and opening the site www.vangeloacolazione.it. At first we did it in Italian, then we added the English version, www.gospelforbreakfast.com, making our testimony international. Even the Lord ask to go all over the world, starting from Jerusalem. The laity, in fact, must be witnesses of the resurrection, as it reads in the issues of the Second Vatican Council: “Each individual layman must stand before the world as a witness to the resurrection and life of the Lord Jesus and a symbol of the living God” (Lumen Gentium 38) . Since we have done it the way we could, we leave these efforts to the wind of the Holy Spirit, so that he can take them wherever he wants: and sure he will, because the Lord always gives life to the works done in his name, which would be insufficient and inadequate without his help. Our dream is that every Christian family may become, with the passing time, a meeting place from which starting a new evangelization.