It is the Day of the Resurrection, and my Beginning has good auspices. Let us then keep the Festival with splendour, and let us embrace one another. Let us say Brethren, even to those who hate us; much more to those who have done or suffered aught out of love for us. Let us forgive all offences for the Resurrection’s sake.
And when we by His special grace plainly gaze upon Him,
seeing no other,
then we need to follow Him
and He draws us into Him by Love.
The Bishop of New York, Dr. Horatio Potter, from the outset grasped the future as they did, and saw and felt that there was an abundant work for them and such as they to do in our Church, under the conditions for which they yearned.
It’s surprising how many Christians prefer not to talk about doubt. Some even refuse to think about it. Somehow, admitting to doubt seems to amount to insulting God, calling his integrity into question. . . . Yet one of the reasons why so many Christians have difficulty in coping with doubt is that they confuse it with two quite separate ideas, which at first seem similar but are actually rather different.
We are taught by the slight lack of faith shown by the blessed Thomas that the mystery of the resurrection is effected on our earthly bodies and in Christ as the firstfruits of the human race. He was no phantom or ghost, fashioned in human shape, simulating the features of humanity, nor yet, as others have foolishly surmised, a spiritual body that is compounded of a subtle and ethereal substance different from the flesh. For some attach this meaning to the expression “spiritual body.”
My fever increased, and I was on the verge of passing away and perishing; for, if I had passed away then, where should I have gone but into the fiery torment which my misdeeds deserved, measured by the truth of thy rule? My mother knew nothing of this; yet, far away, she went on praying for me.
Why does the hand of a faithful disciple in this fashion retrace those wounds that an unholy hand inflicted? Why does the hand of a dutiful follower strive to reopen the side that the lance of an unholy soldier pierced?
What advantage then was it for the immortal to have assumed the mortal? Or what improvement does the everlasting one get by putting on the temporal? How great can any reward be for the everlasting God and King in the bosom of the Father? Don’t you see that this too was done and written because of us and for us?
Who protected the hand of the disciple which was not melted
At the time when he approached the fiery side of the Lord?
Who gave it daring and strength to probe
The flaming bone? Certainly the side was examined.
I myself am convinced and believe that he was in the flesh even after the resurrection. When he came to Peter and his friends, he said to them, “Take hold of me. Touch me, and see that I am not a bodiless ghost.”