Peace be with you.
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In a nondescript room in Jerusalem, the disciples huddled together, their faces etched with a mixture of awe, confusion, and lingering doubt. The air was thick with questions that no one dared to ask aloud. The door was firmly shut, barred against the outside world—a safeguard against the hostile city, that had just days before crucified their leader. It was a room of contradictions, simultaneously a sanctuary and a prison, a place of faith and of fear.
Peter paced the room, his hands restlessly running through his hair, his thoughts racing. John sat on a stool, eyes distant, pondering the profundity of the empty tomb. Thomas leaned against a wall, his arms crossed, a skeptic's frown etched into his features. The others spoke in hushed whispers, speculating, praying, waiting for... something.
Suddenly, there was a change in the atmosphere, a shift almost palpable. The air grew thick, as if charged with a divine electricity. Before anyone could react,
Jesus appeared among them—not walking through the door, but simply there, as though He had materialized from the ether.
"Peace be with you," Jesus said, His voice both familiar and strange, laden with the weight of His recent ordeal and yet brimming with an otherworldly tranquility.
The room fell silent, the disciples frozen, their minds struggling to grasp the reality before them. Was this a vision? A collective hallucination? Or could it truly be Him?
Jesus, reading their doubts as easily as one might read a scroll, showed them His hands and His side—the marks of His crucifixion, indelible proof of His identity and of the staggering miracle that had occurred.
The tension in the room shattered like a dropped vessel, its shards replaced by a surge of overwhelming joy and relief. Jesus was alive! There could be no doubt, no debate. The evidence stood before them, breathing, speaking, living.
"As the Father has sent me, I am sending you," Jesus said, His gaze sweeping across each of their faces, as if imprinting upon them a divine commission that transcended time and circumstance. And then, with a breath that seemed to come not just from His lungs but from the very depths of His being, He breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."
It was a moment of profound transformation—a passing of the mantle, a divine empowerment, an initiation into a new and glorious mystery. The men in that room felt it deep within their souls, a warmth that spread from the crown of their heads to the soles of their feet, filling them with a strength they had never known, a courage they could hardly comprehend.
Thomas, who had been a bastion of skepticism, fell to his knees, his eyes filling with tears. "My Lord and my God!" he exclaimed, his voice tinged with wonder and regret, his doubt obliterated by the undeniable reality before him.
Jesus looked down at Thomas, His eyes filled with a love that knew no bounds—a love that had conquered death, a love that could transform even the most hardened heart.
"Because you have seen me, you have believed," Jesus said softly, "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
In that room, among that motley crew of fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots, something incredible was birthed—a church, a movement, a revolution of love and grace that would sweep across continents, transcend cultures, and change the world forever.
As they left the upper room, stepping into the streets of Jerusalem, then to the ends of the Earth, each disciple carried within him a burning fire, an inextinguishable light, a fragment of the divine. They had been touched by the resurrected Christ, and they would never be the same.
And so, into a world groaning under the weight of oppression, suffering, and death, a message was carried—a message of hope, of life, of a love so powerful it had defeated the grave.
He is risen.
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