What Did Jesus Do in the 40 Days After His Resurrection?

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For forty days after he rose, Jesus showed himself alive to his followers, ate with them and taught them about the kingdom of God. The New Testament records about eleven appearances, from Mary Magdalene at the tomb to the apostles on the Mount of Olives, where he was taken up into heaven.

Luke sums up those weeks in one sentence: he “shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). Much of what those proofs looked like happened at a table, or beside a fire. Peter would later tell a Roman centurion that the witnesses were the ones “who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41). The risen Lord sat down with his friends.

Forty days. Acts 1:3 gives the number, and by the fifth century the Church already kept the fortieth day as the feast of the Ascension. “The sacred forty days, dearly-beloved, are today ended,” Leo the Great, bishop of Rome from 440 to 461, told his people on that feast. The Orthodox priest Thomas Hopko gives the same span: “After His resurrection from the dead Jesus appeared to men for a period of forty days.” Ten days later came Pentecost, whose Greek name means the fiftieth day, when the Spirit fell on the disciples (Acts 2:1). There is a shorter answer to this question in how long Jesus stayed after his resurrection.

Scripture does not say why the time was forty days. The number has been in the story before. The rain of the flood fell “forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7:12), Moses was on the mountain “forty days and forty nights” (Exodus 24:18), and Jesus himself fasted forty days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2). Each time, forty days come before something new begins.

Counting each appearance the Gospels, Acts and Paul describe separately, there are eleven in the forty days, and one more to Paul afterwards. Some may be the same meeting told twice, and John says that “many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book” (John 20:30), so the number is approximate. Here they are in the order the texts suggest:

When	Who saw him	Where	Passage
Easter morning	Mary Magdalene	At the tomb	John 20:11–18; Mark 16:9
Easter morning	The women	On the way from the tomb	Matthew 28:9–10
Easter day	Simon Peter	Not stated	Luke 24:34; 1 Corinthians 15:5
Easter day	Cleopas and a companion	Road to Emmaus	Luke 24:13–35
Easter evening	The disciples, without Thomas	Jerusalem, doors shut	John 20:19–23; Luke 24:36–43
Eight days later	The disciples with Thomas	Jerusalem, doors shut	John 20:26–29
Later	Seven disciples	Sea of Tiberias	John 21:1–23
Later	The eleven	A mountain in Galilee	Matthew 28:16–20
Not stated	Above five hundred at once	Not stated	1 Corinthians 15:6
Not stated	James	Not stated	1 Corinthians 15:7
Forty days on (Acts 1:3)	The apostles	Mount of Olives, near Bethany	Luke 24:50–51; Acts 1:4–12

Paul adds himself at the end of his list: “And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time” (1 Corinthians 15:8). The Catechism of the Catholic Church counts the ascension as the end of the forty days and Paul’s meeting with Christ as “a last apparition that established him as an apostle” (paragraph 659). Paul’s five hundred have a page of their own in 500 in the Bible.

The verses Mark 16:9–20 are a special case. The notes of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ Bible explain that this “Longer Ending” “has traditionally been accepted as a canonical part of the gospel and was defined as such by the Council of Trent,” though its “vocabulary and style indicate that it was written by someone other than Mark,” and that it gathers the appearances found in Luke 24 and John 20. It adds no meeting the other accounts lack, and both the King James Bible and the Catholic bishops’ Bible print it as part of Mark.

He showed them he was truly alive

The first thing the risen Jesus did was let his friends see and touch him. That first evening, behind shut doors, they “supposed that they had seen a spirit,” and he said, “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:37–39). Then, while they “yet believed not for joy,” he asked, “Have ye here any meat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, “and he took it, and did eat before them” (Luke 24:41–43).

Thomas, who had not been there, said he would not believe until he put his finger into the print of the nails. Eight days later Jesus came again and offered him exactly that: “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands” (John 20:27). Thomas answered, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

He opened the Scriptures

On the road to Emmaus, two grieving disciples told a stranger that their hope had died: “we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel” (Luke 24:21). He walked with them, “and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). They did not know him until supper, when “he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him” (Luke 24:30–31). Later he did the same for all the disciples: “Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:45).

He restored Peter

Peter had denied him three times. By the Sea of Tiberias, after a night of catching nothing, the disciples found Jesus on the shore with “a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread,” and he said, “Come and dine” (John 21:9, 12). When they had eaten, he asked Peter three times, “lovest thou me?” and three times gave him work to do: “Feed my lambs,” “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17). There is more on what lay behind those three questions in why Peter denied Jesus.

He gave the Spirit and sent them out

On the first evening he breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” (John 20:22). On the mountain in Galilee he gave them their work for every age: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). In Jerusalem he told them to wait “for the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4), and promised, “ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). So did they have the Spirit or not? John tells of a first gift of the Spirit on Easter evening, and Luke keeps the promise of power for Pentecost, when “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:4).

He taught them about the kingdom

Luke says he spoke “of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3), and the disciples still had questions. “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” they asked. He answered, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power” (Acts 1:6–7), and turned them back to the work of witness.

Scripture does not tell us. It shows him coming and going in ways no ordinary man could. He “vanished out of their sight” at Emmaus (Luke 24:31), and he came into a room “the doors being shut” (John 20:26). Yet he walked, broke bread and cooked fish. The Catechism puts the two sides together: during the forty days, when he “eats and drinks familiarly with his disciples and teaches them about the kingdom, his glory remains veiled under the appearance of ordinary humanity” (paragraph 659).

The Gospels also move between two places. Matthew and John 21 bring the disciples north to Galilee, as the angel and Jesus told the women they would (Matthew 28:7, 10). Luke stays in Jerusalem, where Jesus tells them to “tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Read together, the appearances begin in Jerusalem, move to Galilee, and end back near Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives (Acts 1:12). Luke’s Gospel tells the story so briefly that the ascension seems to follow Easter day, and the same writer gives the forty days in his second book (Acts 1:1–3).

Jesus led the apostles out “as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:50–51). Acts adds the cloud and the two men in white: “this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The disciples did not go home in grief. They “returned to Jerusalem with great joy: and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God” (Luke 24:52–53).

Leo the Great, preaching on that feast, looked back over the forty days. “Those days, therefore, dearly-beloved, which intervened between the Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension did not pass by in uneventful leisure, but great mysteries were ratified in them, deep truths revealed.” The ones who had shut the doors would soon open them to a whole city.

Hopko, writing for the Orthodox Church in America, says that “the ascension of Christ is seen as man’s first entry into that divine glorification for which He was originally created.” Where he went, he means to bring us.

The same Jesus who ate fish with frightened disciples is the one we pray to. He waited for Thomas. He walked the road to Emmaus beside two people who had given up. He had a fire and breakfast waiting for men who had fished all night and caught nothing, and he called Peter back by name. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed,” he told Thomas (John 20:29), and that blessing was spoken for us.

We meet him now as the Emmaus disciples did, when the Scriptures are opened and the bread is broken. And the last words Matthew records from those forty days are still the promise we live on: “lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20).

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• How long did Jesus stay after his resurrection?
• 19 Bible verses about the resurrection of Jesus
• 500 in the Bible: the five hundred witnesses
• 22 Bible verses about doubt
• What does Easter celebrate?

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