At one of the last meetings with His disciples after His resurrection Our Lord “upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen him after he was risen again (Mark XVI. 14).
The reproof which the Master gave the eleven on that occasion was well deserved. There was no good reason for their incredulity and lack of faith in the truth reality of His risen life. His frequent appearances to them in various forms and His intimate meetings with them during forty days were enough to satisfy and convince any reasonable person that He who had been put to death and buried was again alive as He had promised He would be.
But want of faith in the risen Lord, in spite of all they had seen and heard, was far more excusable in the disciples of Christ than it is in us. In their case such astounding things had happened in such quick succession that they had hardly time to assimilate and adjust themselves to all that was taking place. In their Lord, following a life of heavenly teaching, works and miracles, which would appear to defy question or defeat, came His passion, death and burial, when all seemed lost; and then, within three days, the reversal of it all in the resurrection to glory and immortality.
Those were events which the human mind could not readily coordinate in a short time. But now, after [nearly] twenty centuries, the world has had the benefit of knowing the long-attested and established certainty of everything pertaining to the truth of all that Christ claimed to be and was; yet the bulk of mankind refuses to believe or remains indifferent. And in saying this, we are not referring to those distant and uncivilized parts of the earth into which the teachings of the Gospel may not as yet have penetrated, but to the hundreds of millions over the world who have heard the divine message of Christ sufficiently to be attracted by it and moved by its teachings and appeal.
As an excuse for this situation let it not be said that the teachings of the New Testament, beautiful as they are, are too idealistic and unpractical for a world like this, in which we have to live; that the fruits of Christianity been sufficiently manifest and moving greatly to influence mankind; that the actual practice of the teachings of Christ is too difficult for our poor human nature.
Against these and all such reasonings we need only to refer to the facts of life and history, such as the following: Christianity has produced countless thousands of saints and holy persons in every age from its very beginning; it has filled the civilized world with institutions of mercy and charity for afflicted humanity unknown and unheard of before the coming of Christ; its teachings have liberated womanhood and human beings in general from the degradation and slavery to which they were condemned in the ancient pagan world. If given a better chance, Christianity would elevate and ennoble the life of every human being, as it has done for the millions who have earnestly tried to put its teachings into daily practice.
Charles J. Callan, OP & John F. McConnell, MM
Spiritual Riches of the Rosary Mysteries
