Episode Transcript  

One

Why didn’t Christ reveal His Resurrection to more people?

One of the fascinating things about the Resurrection is how few people Christ reveals Himself to. He doesn’t walk about the streets of Jerusalem. He doesn’t show Himself to Pilate, or to the Sanhedrin. There’s no three years of public ministry after the Resurrection like the three years of public ministry before the Resurrection.

It looks, at first, like a wasted opportunity. Why not go prove to the world, to the mob, to His enemies, that He is who He said He was all along? Then they’d have to believe, right? They’d have to admit they’d be wrong. They’d have to repent and commit themselves to the Lord. Right?

No. In fact, the best way to spread Christianity throughout the whole world was not to try to convince a large number of people. It was to do exactly what Jesus did after the resurrection: invest in a few. As St. Peter says, “God raised him on the third day and made him manifest; not to all the people, but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:40-41). 

That’s how the Church was spread to the four corners of the earth.

Two

The Mob Would Be Fickle and Uncommitted

Jesus knew He couldn’t count on a mob. Crowds of people don’t start movements. They don’t change the course of history. They get fired up, and then they quickly lose interest. The crowd of supporters on Palm Sunday, who got riled up and then simply dispersed, they proved you can’t count on a big group to make a big difference.

Besides, when there’s something that has to be done, it’s easier for people in a large group to assume that someone else in the group will do it. Have you ever heard of the “Bystander Effect”? It says that when many people witness a crime or a traffic accident or something, someone is less likely to report it to the police or call 9-1-1 than if just one person has seen it. Because the one person knows his responsibility. He knows it’s him or nobody. And one person is more likely to do something, which means they’re more likely to get results.

Three

It’s not Impressing the Public – it’s Inspiring and Convicting Individuals

St. John Henry Newman points out that if Jesus had shown the miracle of the Resurrection throughout Judea, it would have had the same effect as His miracles had before His passion and death. After all, the crowds had seen His miracles. The Pharisees had seen His miracles. They’d even seen Him raise people like Lazarus from the dead and it hadn’t made any difference. 

Jesus’s miracles to the crowds had created a brief stir, and then people had moved on with their lives. If He had presented the Resurrection to the crowds at large, it would have again created a brief stir, and then again, people would have moved on with their lives.

The point is that the way to spread the faith, the way to light a fire on earth, is not so much to impress crowds. It’s to inspire and convict individuals. So how does one do that?

Four

“I know you, and you know Me. And this is the truth.”

So Jesus came to His few, devoted followers after the resurrection. It was them He ate with. It was them He taught. He came to those who knew Him and knew Him intimately. He could say to them, as He could not say to the crowds, “I know you, and you know Me. And this is the truth.”

Most people didn’t know Jesus that well. So when He rose again, they could have denied it, or ignored it, because He had never meant that much to them anyway. But Jesus meant so much to His close friends and because of that, when He rose again and commissioned them to tell the world, they knew they couldn’t blow it off. 

The apostles and other close disciples, when they saw Jesus risen, when they touched Him, when they ate with Him, when they heard His voice again, they were filled with clarity and conviction and a purpose that would lie at the center of their lives for the rest of their days. And those few men achieved what no crowd ever could. 

Five

Be One of the Few – Invest in a Few

The way the Lord chose to spread His Gospel was to become intimate with a few before the Passion and then return to those few and enflame their hearts after the Resurrection. Now the only way that can happen with us, the only way we can become chosen witnesses who will actually build up the Church, is if we know the Lord intimately too, which only happens in prayer, in a great deal of time spent with Him. 

If Jesus can say to us, “I know you, and you know me, and this is the truth,” then we can spread the faith like the champions He wants us to be. 

The way we will spread the faith, primarily, is the way He spread it. We will get to know a few people, and they will come to know us. And we will say, “I know who you are, and you know who I am. And I am telling you, this is the truth.” And those others, in turn, will be filled with conviction. And they will find others with whom to share that conviction.

If this podcast has helped you, don’t keep it to yourself. Invite someone to pray with you and let the Rosary speak for itself. It could be the beginning of something beautiful in their life.

Suggested Resolutions:

Choose one resolution for today to help you grow closer to God, or create your own. Here are some ideas to inspire you.

• Even in small tasks this week, whenever you assume that someone else will take care of something, step up and be the one to do it.

• Don’t get caught up in the popularity contest, invest deeply in a few good friends, and remember that this is the path to changing the world.

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