The Gospel tells us that Jesus appears to disciples after the Resurrection and they are filled with “awe.” Thomas missed that first resurrection appearance. Later, Jesus draws him close, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side.” Thomas too is filled with “awe.” Much later still, Jesus’ disciples continue to commit themselves to the common life, sharing “among all according to each one’s needs.” The Acts of the Apostles tells us that “Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done.”
The disciples had seen their friend tortured and murdered. They were still being persecuted, some arrested. Yet, they would not live in a death spiral. They would live with meaning. They would live with awe, and thus, they would live with and for each other. We too will live with meaning and therefore awe. We experience mystery and the awe within us cannot entirely express where we end and the rest of the world begins. We are absorbed into awe and experience wonder as we feel ourselves fully alive and fully in union with all other lives. We feel awe for the natural world, the first daffodils, the trees that grow out of rocks, a sunset, the Grand Canyon. We feel awe for the work of our hands, for Michealangelo’s Peita, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the crafts we love, the gardens we nurture. Most especially, we feel awe for other people; for children and for the many seemingly average people who fill our lives, and for the communities we create together. This is the conclusion of Dacher Keltner in his 2023 book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. Ketner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and founding director of the Greater Good Science Center. As Ketner engaged in his research to find awe, he said, “the first surprise was: it’s other people around us — everyday people — who bring us awe, and what we called moral beauty.” He says, “what most commonly led people around the world to feel awe, was an experience of other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming” of adversity. We are awed as we see communities targeted for death refusing to live in a death spiral. They are rising with new life. ICE targeted cities of D.C. L.A., Chicago, Minneapolis, and more are filled with awe-some people who will not live without each other. If we want happiness, Ketner advises us to live in awe. It is the awe we feel when we let our vulnerable, hurting bodies touch the wounds of another vulnerable, hurting body. We may name that awe God or Beauty or Presence or…. Like the early disciples, we share communion and thus we share awe.
“Awe, and where we find it, and how it changes our minds, where when we feel awe in the moment, we suddenly feel like we’re part of an integrated community. We do things that are good for the community.” “So, I think awe is really a direct pathway to addressing these social crises of our time.” (Dacher Ketner)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, we live in awe.
Question: When did I last experience awe? Might I go in search?
April 12, 2026 Gospel John 20:19-31 Second Sunday of Easter