Being witnesses of the Good News of Christ

Jesus said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things" (Lk 24:44-48).

This passage from the Gospel of Luke is proclaimed at Mass during Easter Week. It describes the moment when Jesus appeared to the Apostles for the first time after His death. Jesus explained to them His passion, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. As He stood before them as the Risen One who had defeated death, He “opened their minds” so they could understand how all this had been foretold by the “Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
Then Jesus told them that “You are witnesses of these things.”
The word witness can have two meanings. One definition is that a witness is a person who sees an event take place and, therefore, has knowledge of what has happened Another meaning is that a witness is one to testifies to what one knows is true.
Which of these two definitions better describes what Jesus means when He tells the Apostles: “You are witnesses of these things?” Does He intend the Apostles to remember what they have seen and keep it in their hearts, or does He mean for the Apostles to go forth and testify to what they have seen?
The answer is that Jesus uses the word “witness” to include both meanings.
Jesus wants the Apostles to remember what has happened, what they have “seen and heard” (1 Jn 1:3). But He wants much more than that; He wants them to go forth and to tell the world. “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19).
Jesus tells the Apostles, and through them He tells us, that it is not sufficient merely that they have seen these wondrous acts of God, they must go and testify to them as His witnesses before the world.
We are called to be witnesses of the Good News of Christ, both as people who know the truth and who also testify to it. As truly as the Apostles, we have seen the Lord’s passion, crucifixion, death, and resurrection, not through physical presence at the moments they occurred, but through the eyes of faith and the words of Sacred Scripture. On Good Friday we sang: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” On Easter we sang “Jesus Christ is Risen today!” Now we who have witnessed these events must go and testify to this truth before others in our daily lives.
We testify by the way we live our lives. If we believe what we have seen through faith and scripture, it must change our lives. It must effect what we say and do: the care of neighbor we offer, the forgiveness we give, the generosity we offer to the poor, the time we spend with those who need us, by the values we embrace.
To be a witness to Easter is not confined to our church buildings. Instead, it is to be lived by daily being members of the Church, the Body of Christ, the pilgrim people of faith who are on our own journeys of life, witnessing with our lives to the salvation the Risen Lord has won for us and which we hope one day to enjoy.