Third-Day Is The Most Optimistic Day in The Scriptures

Hosea the prophet had to go through much because he was a prophet; he was even asked to get married to a prostitute in the town. Yet, Hosea says, “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds…. On the third day he will restore us” (Hosea 6:1-2). Retreat is this day (days) of restoration; retreat is we, revisiting our God. The third day is the most optimistic day. The Gospels repeatedly speak of the third day.

After losing the boy Jesus, on the third day, his parents found him in the temple (Luke 2:41-52). Jesus returns to his parents on the third day; perhaps he said sorry too. The third day is a day of returning home, returning to the community; it is a day to forgive and ask forgiveness. One of the biggest confidence of Jesus was that he had not lost anyone who was given to him, to his care (John 18:9).

On the third day, there was a marriage in Cana in Galilee, and when they ran short of wine Jesus turned water into wine (John 2: 1-12). On the third day, we receive the first sign from Jesus to recognise him. A sign that life will be full and tasty again; and put an end to routine, robotic, tasteless existence.

People in the temple were trying to make the temple bigger and happening with more money and bigger businesses (John 2: 14-19). Jesus overturns their businesses and scatters their money. On demanding an explanation, Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. He was talking about his body, perhaps everybody which is a temple. One moves to a sacred temple/body consciousness.

The only sign Jesus gave to people pressing for proof is the sign of Jonah, who was for three days in the belly of a huge fish (Matthew 12: 40). Third day is a day when one’s vocation is thrust back on him. One must constantly rediscover his vocation; or more clearly, find vocation within a vocation. Don’t be settled with what we grasped when we were called first. We are constantly at the crossroads; the roads that we choose would make all the difference.

The resurrection happens on the third day. The empty tomb is actually filled with life for those daring to look within. Like a grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying, with death life sprouts back to life. Those who ran to the tomb and found it empty were told, go to Galilee, and you will find him there. Galilee is seashore. Seashore is a place where people move fast, they literally run because they are dealing with perishable goods, thus they must act fast or allow things to get rotten. In the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15: 11-32), the younger son coming back to his senses, says, I will rise (meaning resurrect) and go to my father's house. It is so revealing that the father in the parable says at the end, ‘Your brother was dead, and now he is alive’. Retreat is one resurrecting and returning to his/her father’s house.

Going for a retreat is like taking initiative and responsibility like the women running to the tomb of Jesus early morning of the third day. Constantly thinking in the mind, ‘Who will roll back the stone for us? Of course, there is a facilitator, but eventually, it is the angel of the Lord who does it. In Mark’s gospel, it is a strange young man who rolls the stone away. Who is this strange young man? He was there following Jesus two chapters before. He was forcefully chased away, perhaps even insulted. Now he is there in a white robe; perhaps he is a testimony of what one becomes through the event of resurrection.

The retreat is the third-day phenomenon: it is a day of finding Jesus and returning home, it is a day to end our robotic existence and become meaningful and tasty again, it is a day when one moves to a sacred temple/body consciousness, it is a day to rediscover our vocation, it is a day to resurrect and return to our father’s house. If no transformation happens by the third day, as we move on unaffected to the fourth day there begins to be rottenness and stink. Retreat in many ways realizing the fringe of human expectations and possibilities, and wait in need of help and mercy, and the good news it’s that it is ‘the right time for God’.

Notes taken during my annual retreat, preached by Bobby Jose Kattikad, Capuchin.

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