Embracing the Reality of Jesus: Overcoming Gnosticism in Today’s World

“The wonderful appearance of Jesus to His disciples has an interesting line in it: ‘They,’ meaning the apostles, ‘were startled and terrified, thinking they were seeing a ghost.’

Why would they think they were seeing a ghost, where does this come from, and of course, what does that have to do with us today?

Back in Jesus’s day, throughout the entire Roman Empire, there was a particular philosophy that many people had called Gnosticism.

Gnosticism can best be described as the belief that the world is corrupt; that it is awful and filled with sin. That didn’t take very hard to convince people that it was true, because a lot of people suffered in Roman times.

There was an awful lot of slavery, conquering, and Roman persecution. At the end of the day, people were put to death in a horrible way by crucifixion and they were way over-taxed. You could say the world is a lousy place, but Gnosticism goes further.

Gnosticism then says, ‘the world is so corrupt that any god you might believe in, no matter where that god is, comes into this world and is corrupted. Therefore, the world will corrupt any deity entering this world, causing them to no longer be a deity.’

For the explanation, they’d use many examples. They’d cite the Greek and Roman gods every time they entered the world, and they were doing all kinds of crazy things involving killing, sadness, and pain.

They also hurt a lot of people. They say, ‘see, the world corrupted every god and you believed it. So any real god, it’s not going to be on this earth. They wouldn’t come in because a real guy would know that the world would corrupt.’

That’s Gnosticism, and unfortunately, many Jewish people were exposed to Gnosticism and began to believe that it all might be true after all: ‘We thought that Jesus might be the Son of God. Look what happened to Him – He died on the cross in a horrible death. So maybe this is the way it is, that God is always going to be removed from us and is never going to be with us. He won’t dare enter this corrupt world.’

However, the opposite is true.

Jesus came into this world. And yes, He suffered greatly, but He overcame this world and rose again. He’s walking, but not as a projection, not as a ghost, not as something in the world that that isn’t real; He’s very real. He wants the apostles to know how very real He is, so He says, ‘Touch me, I have flesh, I have bones.’ He even says, ‘Give me something to eat.’

He wants to make it perfectly clear that yes, the world is corrupt, and sinful, but a God who loves the people in this world will enter into the worst corruption the world can offer like the Cross, overcome it, and open His love out to all who are willing to follow Him so that they too, despite the corruption of the world, can see through God’s love the opportunity for salvation.

This is very powerful because by realizing that Jesus is really risen from the dead means that the corruption of the world had not prevailed and will not prevail. Everybody has things that tempt them, that trouble them; struggles they’re dealing with of all kinds, from economic to medical.

Everyone has crosses to bear.

Jesus Himself bore His Cross. But this Jesus is very real, and we must never forget that because we have received Him into our lives. He’s walking there with us through all of the trials and tribulations of this world, so that as we walk with Him, we know that we won’t suffer too.

He never said we will be spared of our sufferings, but if we bear our cross, knowing that Jesus is with us all the way, we will overcome anything that this world throws at us on the way to the Heavenly Kingdom. This real Jesus, this very real Jesus, loves every one of us and wants to walk with each one of us throughout our lives in this world.

At the end of the day, when Jesus comes again, all corruption will be disappeared. And as the Scripture says in the very first verses of the Bible, God created the world and it was good. We will achieve that goodness and all things holding fast to the Lord by walking with Him every step of our life.”

~Fr. Joe Gembala

Check out the online homily here!