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Second Sunday of Easter Jn 20/29-31 |
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| Background: The Easter Stories as we read them now are theological overlays of earlier resurrection stories, told in the form that they are to encourage the faith and reassure the early Christians. We cannot view them as "instant replays" of events which happened precisely as they are narrated. On the other hand we cannot deny the factuality of the underlying theme that many of the early Christians did encounter Jesus who was dead as now alive again. One cannot harmonize all the resurrection stories into a coherent narrative, but one can see in them the coherent faith of the contemporaries of Jesus. Many scholars now think that the stories, in something like their present form, were already in existence with in the first decade of early Christianity. |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time there was a scientist who did not believe in God or life after death or anything else. He was particularly skeptical about "psychic phenomena like the so-called Near Death Experiences which he explained as the result of brain chemistry as the body dies. Then he had major surgery and died on the operating table. He felt himself leaving his body, drifting through space, floating down the long tunnel towards a figure in light. He was filled with peace and happiness and joy. His family and friends were waiting for him. Then suddenly he was pulled back into his body and recovered. The experience did not change his mind. It was, he said, only the chemistry in my brain, which is part of the evolutionary process so that we humans can fool ourself about what death is. Eventually, he said, there would have been nothing and I would have no longer existed. The figure in light was an illusion. He did admit a year or two later that, like all the others who report the N.D.E, he was no longer afraid of death. Still he rejected the experience. There was no meaning in it at all, save for those who want to find meaning. |
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