Grace

We, also need to remember it is when the disciples are most aware of their failures and shortcomings, they are given the power to forgive sins.  I have always said, I would like to go to reconciliation with St. Peter, because he would be the one most aware of his humanity and his vulnerability.  From his experience, he would have been given the gifts of compassion, understanding, and empathy.  We need to be showered with these gifts.  These are the gifts we need to shower on ourselves so, we can enjoy these self same gifts when they are offered to us by our Heavenly Father.  "Grace perfects human nature." (St. Thomas Aquinas)  It is in and through this experience, we come to believe and know the Risen Christ.  It is in the awareness and celebration of these gifts, we come to know the joy of the Risen Christ.  We, too can testify, "The Lord is Risen," and His risen life is a life we now share and experience.  We will come to believe in the Risen Christ not because we have seen Him, rather, we have experienced His risen presence in our lives.  I like what Thomas Keating says, "This,  of course, is an important message for us.  It tells us that it is far better to relate to the Risen Christ on the basis of pure faith that rests not on appearances, feelings, external evidence or what other people say, but on our personal experience of the Christ-life rising up and manifesting its fruits within us.  This is the living faith that empowers us to act under the influence of the Spirit - the same Spirit that Jesus breathed upon the apostles on the evening of His resurrection."