You're going to have to excuse my voice today because it's not quite all there. But you know who is all there: our risen Lord. We continue to rejoice throughout this octave of Easter. The feast is so splendid that we need eight days to actually celebrate it, as if each day is Easter Sunday.
And my dear friends, in today's Gospel we hear about what happens on Easter Sunday, when the disciples of Jesus who were on the road to Emmaus return and are speaking with the apostles. They are amazed that they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. And suddenly, as they are telling the story, the Gospel actually says, “While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you’” (Lk 24:36). My friends, isn’t that always the hallmark of Jesus’s presence in our lives—peace? 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” (Lk 24:38–39). And then he reminds 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” (Lk 24:44). And then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
The author of life, the one who gives us his everything, the one who created all things, is continually there for us to strengthen us, to encourage us, and to accompany us through the darkness into the wonderful light of his resurrection. Because, my brothers and sisters, if death itself cannot keep us from God, if life that he has created is not meant to end, if he has created a place beyond our imagination in which for eternity we will be able to know one another, to praise God together, to live in complete holiness—unblemished, totally purified, totally unattached to sin—in a state of eternal joy, a joy beyond anything we can understand in the here and now, then we would gladly suffer all things to make sure that we get there safely through the grace and mercy of God.
Now this was Easter Sunday. Fast forward. Our first reading happens after Pentecost. And yesterday we spoke about the Beautiful Gate, where a crippled man, crippled from birth, was always placed to collect alms. He had no other source of income. And so Peter and John, on the way into the Beautiful Gate—which, as we said, was called as such because it was adorned with the most precious and beautiful materials, more precious than gold and silver—encounter him.
And so Peter says to the crippled man who is lying beside this beauty—what an ironic image, a shocking image: such brokenness, such imperfection, such pain lying beside such beauty, such apparent perfection. And in the name of Jesus, what that gate could not give him, Saint Peter gives him: something more precious than anything else one can find in this world. He heals him.
And he moves from the Beautiful Gate to the Portico of Solomon. We are told: “As the crippled man who had been cured clung to Peter and John, all the people hurried in amazement toward them in the portico called Solomon’s Portico” (Acts 3:11).
Now what was this Solomon’s Portico? From the Beautiful Gate they go to Solomon’s Portico, a covered colonnade—a long row of columns with a kind of roof—on the eastern side of the Temple. It was a public space where people gathered and where rabbis would teach. It was like an open-air corridor. It was believed to stand on foundations from the Temple of King Solomon, the original Temple built in the tenth century B.C., later destroyed and then rebuilt and magnificently expanded. Even if the visible structure in Jesus’s day was later, it preserved the memory and prestige of Solomon.
King Solomon was remembered as the builder of the first Temple and as the king of wisdom and glory. So attaching his name to this grand colonnade gave it historical and symbolic weight—almost as if to say that this place stands in continuity with the glory of Israel’s origins.
And so we have a beautiful movement: the Temple of Solomon, the place of God’s presence; the Portico of Solomon, the place of teaching and gathering; and now the apostles in Acts proclaiming that God’s presence is fully revealed in the risen Christ. In the very place that recalls Solomon’s glory, Peter announces: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses” (Acts 3:15). The old glory is not denied—it is fulfilled and surpassed.
And then Peter reiterates what Jesus had told them in today’s Gospel. He reminds them of the prophets and says: “Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment” (Acts 3:19). And again: “A prophet like me will the Lord your God raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen” (Acts 3:22; cf. Deut 18:15).
My brothers and sisters, this is the distinction between the Old Israel and the New Israel, which is the Church. What makes us part of this people of God is our faith—our willingness to listen to that prophet, who is not merely a prophet but the Lord himself. “Everyone who does not listen to that prophet will be cut off from the people” (Acts 3:23).
So let us listen to him. For he is the Lord God of hosts among us, who has conquered death, who has suffered unimaginable torment out of love for us, and who is now risen from the dead and remains with us until the end of time—here on earth, and for all eternity in heaven.
Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, may you all be blessed in a very special way this day.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace.
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