It would be much easier to live a Christian life if the risen Jesus were merely some ghost of his former self, but he is not that.

He has hands and feet, arms and legs;
he is short and tall and of every imaginable build;
his face is male and female;
his voice is loud and soft, encouraging and demanding,
commanding, compelling and consoling.

He lives in those we love and he lives in those we don’t love.
He lives in the young and in the old and in those not yet born.
Today in this church he has hundreds of faces,
each one different and each the same because he wears them all.

Who knows how many times in the past week
did the risen Christ appear to you and me
and ask, in some way, for something to eat, something to drink,
for some gesture on our part to show that we recognize him,
that like the first disciples, we too are witnesses of his resurrection

Dying

"When evening came he was at table with the twelve."

He was sitting at table, eating with those who were going to betray him.
He even went so far as to wash their feet.
This is Jesus' way of handling opposition, violence, and betrayal.
Not only Judas would run away from his arrest and death.
In the end only John would return, brought by Jesus' mother, Mary.
Jesus took the road of nonviolence, of consistent love, a road taken by the best of his followers even in our days.

Listen to what one of them, Martin Luther King, Jr., said:

To our most bitter opponents we say: we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering.
We shall meet your physical force with soul force.
Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you.
Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you.
Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you.
Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you.
But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer.
One day we shall win our freedom, but not only for ourselves.
We shall appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.

Another great mind and heart in this country Father John L. McKenzie, summed it up in his own poignant way.

"If Jesus taught us anything it was how to die, not how to kill!"
These are words worth reflecting upon in the violence and harshness of our days.