But not all the Apostles were convinced even by these four appearances, by the fourfold testimony. To some, this prompt, this extraordinary resurrection, which had taken place by night in a secret and suspicious manner, seemed more the hallucination of grief and of yearning than actual truth. Who were the people who claimed to have seen Him? A hysterical woman who had been possessed by a devil; a distraught man who had not seemed himself from the moment when he had denied his Master; and two plain fellows who were not even His real Disciples, and whom Jesus had thus chosen, no one knew why, in preference to His closer friends. Mary might have been deceived by a phantom; Simon, to win back his self-respect after his baseness, was determined to do no less than Mary; the others were perhaps impostors or, at the most, visionaries. If Christ were really risen, would not He have been seen by them all while they were together? Why these preferences? Why this appearance at three-score furlongs from Jerusalem?
They believed in His resurrection, but they thought of it as one of the signs of the ending of the world, when everything would be fulfilled. But now that they found themselves confronted with the fact that He alone had risen from the dead while everyday life went on as usual, they realized that the return into life of human flesh (and of human flesh which had not gone to sleep peacefully in the last sleep, but whose life had been torn away by violence), that this idea of rising from the dead not in the distant future but in the immediate present, contradicted all the other concepts which made up the tissue of their minds. They realized that this contradiction had always existed, but their doubt had not risen to consciousness until this brusque encounter of two impossible elements: a remote miracle and an actual fact.
If Jesus had risen from the dead, that would mean that He was really God; but would a real God, a Son of God, ever have been reconciled to allow Himself to be killed, and in so shameful a way? If He could conquer death, why had He not stricken down the judges, put Pilate to confusion, paralyzed the arms of those about to nail Him to the cross? Through what paradoxical mystery had the Omnipotent allowed Himself to be dragged through the ignominy of the weak?
They were reasoning thus among themselves, some of the Disciples who had heard but had not understood. Prudent like all sophists, they did not venture openly to deny the resurrection in the presence of those exalted hearts, but they reserved judgment, turning over in their minds the reasons for its possibility and impossibility, wishing for a manifest confirmation, but unable to hope for one.
In the excitement of the day no one had eaten. But the women had prepared supper, and now all sat down to the table. Simon remembered the Last Thursday: “This do in remembrance of me.”
And a flood of tears dimmed his eyes while he broke the bread and gave it to his friends.
HAVE YE HERE ANY MEAT?
They had scarcely eaten the last mouthfuls when Jesus appeared in the doorway, tall and pale. He looked at them one by one, and in His melodious voice greeted them: “Peace be unto you.”
No one answered. Their astonishment overcame their joy, even for those who had already seen Him since His death. On their faces the Man risen from the dead read the doubt which He knew they all felt, the question which they did not dare express in words, “Art Thou really Thyself a living man, or a spirit which comes from the caverns of the dead to tempt us?”
“Why are ye troubled?” said the Man who had been betrayed, “and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I, myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”