6 April 2026 – Monday of the Easter Octave
Homily for Monday of the week within the Easter Octave
The biblical readings offered to us during the Eucharistic celebrations of this week within the Easter Octave are exceptionally rich.
Each day's Gospel will present us with an apparition of Jesus after his Resurrection, taking us from the Gospel of Matthew to that of John, then to that of Luke, not forgetting that of Mark. Today it is Jesus' encounter with the group of women who had come to the tomb on Easter morning and found it empty. Tomorrow, we will read the account of his meeting with Mary Magdalene in the garden. The following day will be his meeting with the disciples of Emmaus. On Thursday, he will show himself to the Eleven, just as the disciples of Emmaus are telling them about their meeting with him. Finally, on Saturday, Jesus will meet the disciples by the Sea of Galilee, where he eats bread and fish with them.
At the same time, the first reading of each day will unfold in parallel like another film, the scenes of which are set fifty days later. We will see Peter bravely speaking to the crowd after Pentecost, then working with John on his first healing in the name of Jesus and suffering imprisonment for the first time, also in his name. This first proclamation of Jesus to the crowd by Peter and John marks the beginnings of the ministry of the early Church, the genesis and early developments of which will be shown to us by the liturgy of the whole of the Easter season, up to Pentecost.
- Today's first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, begins with the words: ‘On the day of Pentecost, Peter, standing with the other apostles, raised his voice...’ We are immediately in the right place: the Apostles were transformed by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them on the day of Pentecost. They who had fled and hidden at the time of Jesus‘ Passion, and who had remained half-believing, half-disbelieving, during Jesus’ apparitions, are now brave men who do not hesitate to face the crowd. Peter is no longer the braggart who denied Jesus. He is now ‘with the Eleven’, one of them. Together they bear witness.
In today's Gospel, which takes place on the very morning of the Resurrection, Jesus first appears to the group of women who had been an important part of his group of disciples during his public life. It is to them that Jesus gives his first apostolic mission. He first sends them to the Apostles to tell them that Jesus is waiting for them in Galilee. That is where, in a way, everything will begin... at the very moment when it seemed that everything was over.
Armand Veilleux