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By Maximilian Watner
Guest Columnist

Well, Easter is over, and most of us have moved on, trying to find gifts for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, perhaps, and looking forward to time off for Memorial Day. But even though the jelly beans are gone and the decorations have been stashed away, Catholics continue to celebrate Easter for 40 days.

During this time, they are encouraged to ponder the wounds on Jesus’ risen Body. Consider Him as He appears to His Apostles after His resurrection: He is glorious and victorious, yet the first thing He does is show “them His hands and His side (John 20:20).”

Why did Christ keep His wounds when He rose from the dead? The mystery of the Redemption is one reality composed of two disparate elements: Christ’s death and resurrection, and our own death and resurrection in Him. This reality is one in Christ’s wounded Body.  Because we keep our wounds of sin, He keeps His. He shows us these marks of His crucifixion to demonstrate that they are the way He is glorified. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into His glory (Luke 24:26)?” They are His ornaments, the proof of His love.

Jesus knows even better than we do the depths of laziness, pride, and vanity that lie within us, and that is why He is wounded in us; here is our very way to glory in Him. We cannot match Him in His majesty and perfection, but He will match us, wound for wound. His wounds are the way that He “enters His glory,” and also the way that we enter Him. “Bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing (John 20:27).” Because we lack faith, Christ literally opens His Heart to us, showing us what He has done for our sakes.

But to reach that Heart, we must go through His wounds. Our very misery is the object of the love of the Heart of Jesus for us. Why? Because God’s is a merciful love and so He loves us because we are miserable and need loving and not because we are good and loveable.

Peter and Judas were overcome with this misery after they both abandoned Jesus. But the main difference is not that Peter repented and Judas didn’t; both were filled with regret. The difference is that Judas simply couldn’t believe that Christ meant what He said when He called Judas “Friend,” even at the moment of the betrayal. He didn’t believe in the love of Jesus. Peter, however, understood that Christ’s wounds are our hope. Christ’s wounds – symbols of His death and resurrection – save us despite the discouraging evils within us, and they gain the ultimate victory. We have only to cooperate and believe.

BROTHER MAXIMILIAN WATNER is on the staff at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Buckingham County. He can be reached at webmaster@stas.org.