2018-4-14

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣通过在水上步行来显示驾驭自然的权威。纵观《圣经》，水总是危险和混乱的象征。在一开始当一切都是无形的废墟时，天主的神在水面上运行。这表明天主统治所有黑暗混乱力量。

 

在《旧约》中，以色列人在逃离埃及时被红海拦住。通过梅瑟的祈祷，他们在分开了的海水之间走到对岸。

 

在《新约》中，我们可以看到同样的象征。四部福音书均有耶稣驾驭海浪的故事。故事中的船和船上的伯多禄以及其他门徒让人联想起天主教会。船在海上漂移，而教会在历史长河上漂移。

 

风暴—混乱、腐败、愚蠢、危险、迫害—将无可避免地出现。耶稣在海上步行而来。这是对他的神性作出肯定：正如起初天主的神在水上运行一样，如今耶稣在水上行走。

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus demonstrates his authority over nature by walking on the sea. Water is, throughout the Scriptures, a symbol of danger and chaos. At the very beginning of time, when all was a formless waste, the spirit of the Lord hovered over the surface of the waters. This signals God’s lordship over all of the powers of darkness and disorder.

 

In the Old Testament the Israelites are escaping from Egypt, and they confront the waters of the Red Sea. Through the prayer of Moses, they are able to walk through the midst of the waves.

 

Now in the New Testament, this same symbolism can be found. In all four of the Gospels, there is a version of this story of Jesus mastering the waves. The boat, with Peter and the other disciples, is evocative of the Church, the followers of Jesus. It moves through the waters, as the Church will move through time.

 

All types of storms—chaos, corruption, stupidity, danger, persecution—will inevitably arise. But Jesus comes walking on the sea. This is meant to affirm his divinity: just as the spirit of God hovered over the waters at the beginning, so Jesus hovers over them now.

 

2018-4-15

朋友们，在今天的福音中，复活了的耶稣显现给十一位门徒。祂显现的不是一个纯精神性的灵魂、不是鬼魂或幻觉，而是可触可见、有肉有骨、还可以吃鱼的肉体。门徒们始料不及，死者通过天主的力量有血有肉地、客观地复活了。

 

我们虽然坚称这种肉体性和客观性，但也不能走极端。被钉死在十字架上的耶稣确实死而复活，但祂不再受时间和空间的限制。总而言之，祂不像拉匝禄、雅依洛的女儿或纳因寡妇的儿子那样复活后还是要再次死亡。

 

相反，耶稣的身体彻底改变、容光焕发，不受时空拘束；如保禄说的“精神的”肉体。其中意义是：祂已战胜死亡及从属于死亡的一切。祂复活的身体既预示又承诺了天主想要给予我们全人类的一切。

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel, the risen Jesus appears to his eleven disciples. He does not appear as a Platonic soul, a ghost, or a hallucination. Instead, he can be touched and seen, has flesh and bones, and can consume baked fish. Against all their expectations, a dead man had returned, through the power of God, bodily and objectively from death.  

 

Even while insisting on this bodiliness and objectivity, we must not go to the opposite extreme.  It really was Jesus, the crucified, who had returned from the dead. But he did not come back simply resuscitated to the confines of ordinary space and time. He was not, in a word, like Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus, or the son of the widow of Naim, all people who had been raised only to die again.

 

Instead, Jesus’ body is transformed and transfigured, independent of the strictures of space and time; it is, in Paul’s language, a “spiritual” body. And the point is this: he has triumphed over death and all that pertains to death. His resurrected body is a foretaste and promise of what God intends for all of us.