Kerygma - A Proclamation of the Good News

Homily for Easter Friday

Peter stands before the elders of Israel and proclaims, “It was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed.” It must be noted that in making this declaration, Peter names Jesus as the Christ, the anointed one for whom the entire Jewish nation has been waiting since the days of Moses. We have heard St. Peter declare that Jesus is the Messiah on a previous occasion. When Jesus asked who people thought he was, it was Peter who voiced his conviction that Jesus was the Messiah. However, now he boldly makes the same proclamation before the man who had put Jesus to death.

In the Gospel text for today, St. John tells us that this was the third time that Jesus appeared to his apostles. Jesus appeared before the apostles in the upper room where they were hiding for fear of the Jews on two separate occasions. On those occasions it was St. Thomas who proclaimed that Jesus was his Lord and his God. Having received the Holy Spirit, they are now preaching the name of Jesus and calling people to repentance. It must be noted that this was the very reason and the very same message that Jesus preached when he appeared in Galilee.

The content of their preaching is called “kerygma,” a Greek word which means proclamation. The Greek verb from which this noun is drawn means “to proclaim as a herald.” After the very beginning of the       Gospel, Jesus had told these fishermen that they would now fish for people. In this extension of St. John’s Gospel, chapter twenty-one, we see that Jesus’ assertion has come true. The apostles are now proclaiming Jesus as the Christ and are proclaiming the very same message that Jesus preached. In the narrative that we hear today, St. John reminds us that his heralds had been fishermen, ordinary laborers who made their wages by the work of their hands.

We, too, are ordinary laborers. We, who walk in the footsteps of Jesus and his apostles, are also meant to be heralds of the Good News. We fulfill that vocation every time that we act in the name of Jesus. Faith comes through hearing. People will not come to faith unless they hear the Good News. As followers of Francis, who called himself the Herald of a Great King