Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, 2024 - Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; 1 John 2:1-5A; Luke 24:35-48

What decade of your life are you in right now? Yeah, I know. No matter which one, there are certain things that stand out in your memory, mostly non-personal things. I’ll give you some examples from my own memory. My entire Catholic education from grade 1 through grade 12. The beginning of Rock ’n Roll. Not the election of John Kennedy, but his assassination. The turbulent 1960’s. The resignation of a disgraced President. The first man ever to walk on the moon. The planes, crashing into the towers. And I find that, now that I am on the cusp of my eighth decade of life, I see those things differently from the way that I saw them ten years ago or thirty years ago or fifty years ago. I’m sure the same thing is probably true of you, no matter how young or old you are. 

That’s why I asked you to listen carefully for the two titles that St. Luke gives Jesus in St. Peter’s speech. They were “The Holy and Righteous One” and “The Author of Life.” Now, you have a very complicated time frame in our First Reading. St. Luke is writing in the mid 80’s, about fifty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Notice in the Gospel, when Jesus talks about what he had taught them, he says, “the proclamation of the gospel.” Jesus couldn’t be talking about the proclamation of the gospel, because it hadn’t happened yet. Luke was talking about what’s happened to the story of Jesus in the last fifty years. How it’s become gospel instead of just history. So, Luke is writing fifty years after this little story about St. Peter preaching in the temple. This little story took place only a few weeks after the resurrection and ascension. So, the story goes all the way back to the very beginning, but it’s being told by somebody who wasn’t there then, who learned the story from other people. And what has he got? He’s got two random titles for Jesus that are very, very old. He knows that St. Peter used them at the very beginning, but nobody uses them anymore.

The first one, “The Holy and Righteous One,” was probably the first thing that the Apostles thought after they digested the fact that Jesus was actually alive, after seeing him dead. He was the one predicted in the writings of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and all those people who wrote about a coming one. This must be the one they talked about, “The Holy and Righteous One.” That’s all they knew of the risen Jesus.

But then you have this other title of Jesus, “The Author of Life.” The Author of Life. Now, I looked up translations of that line - English translations, because there are a lot of them. There are probably fifty or sixty different translations of the Bible that you can buy online. So, I looked up some of the most popular translations. These are the four that kept coming up. Not only “The Author of Life,” but “The Prince of Life,” “The Leader of Life” and “The Leader of the Life.” Each of those four translations means something different and started being popular at a different point in the history of the Church. 

So, let’s start with “The Leader of the Life.” The Life was one of the things that the ancient Christians called their community. We are The Life. We are The Way. So, if you call Jesus “The Leader of the Life,” what are you talking about? You’re talking about your belief that Jesus lives within the Church as we move through time and space. If you drop the little the from that title, and just call him “The Leader of Life,” then what are you talking about? Then you’re talking about the fact that Jesus leads us into a promised resurrection at the end of time. A very different concept altogether. If you call him “The Prince of Life,” then you’re talking about the Christian belief that Jesus, through his incarnation, becomes the primary figure of all human history, and everything is supposed to revolve around him and his teachings until the end of time. If, on the other hand, you call him “The Author of Life,” you are referring to our recognition that, if Jesus is truly divine, he was there at the creation, all those many, many eons and eons ago. The big bang or whatever you want to call it. He was there.

During the next week, take some time to let some of the pop-ups in your decade come to the fore. Maybe you are dealing with a lingering grief of some sort. Then the Jesus you want is the one who promises us resurrection. You want “The Leader of Life.” Maybe you’re struggling with something that the Church teaches or requires of us. Then you want “The Leader of the Life.”  The one who stays with us through the centuries, guiding his Church and every person in it. Maybe you are concerned, very much, about the various issues in the world today, the seemingly unending strife and violence. Then, maybe the one you want is “The Prince of Life.” Or, maybe, you’re very much concerned about major issues like the environment, capital punishment, war and peace, all those things. Maybe they’re troubling you. Then the Jesus you want with you this week is “The Author of Life.”

And ask that version of Jesus to walk with you as you deal with these particular pop-ups. Just like Luke, fifty years after St. Peter, saw the same events in a different way, you’ll see things differently now than you saw them then. Ask Jesus to help you see them through the lens of “The Author of Life.”