Third Sunday of Easter April 23, 2023
Acts
2:14a.22-23; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35
As we journey through life with all its problems and
distractions we can certainly lose our perspective. We can lose all direction
to life and left to ourselves we become nothing and remain with uncertainty.
Any positive support, a sincere understanding can place a person on the right
path. This is what the readings of today
tell us that hope will come when we expect little. Human hope is a fragile
thing and when it withers it’s difficult to revive. Hopelessness as a disease
of the human spirit is desperately hard to cure. Today God challenges us to
meet the Risen Christ who comes to us in ordinary life situations. All of the Easter accounts suggest that
Christ comes to us in the places where we live our lives. It is easy to mistake
the presence of the Lord like Mary for a gardener, Peter as a man on the beach,
Cleopas and his companion while at meal. Easter comes and gives us a fresh
chance to believe and live in a new exciting way. The Easter story and the
story of the Emmaus journey hover around us all the time. God never forces
himself on us, but Christ joins us as a consoling letter from a friend.
Two depressed disciples leave the company of the apostles
and believers in Jerusalem and head for Emmaus to get away from it all. That
same day, late in the evening, they come right back to rejoin the company of
apostles and believers that they had abandoned earlier in the day, full of joy
and zeal. What happened to them to give rise to this dramatic turnaround? They
met a stranger on the way – a stranger who did not quite look like Jesus but
who turned out to be Jesus after all
“Never speak to strangers!” is one of the earliest words of
wisdom that parents pass on to their children. And yet when you come to think
of it, had Cleopas and his companion followed this advice, Jesus would have
passed them by and they would never have had the transforming encounter with
the risen Lord. Who knows how many times the risen Lord has passed you and me
by and we did not recognise him or experience his transforming grace all
because of our fear or strangers?
The journey to Emmaus begins in blindness, gloom,
disillusionment and despair. It ends with the warming of the disciples' hearts,
the opening of their eyes, and their return to Jerusalem. It begins with the
shattering of an immature faith and ends with the disciples giving witness to a
mature faith. Their story now is a new one—a story filled with life and hope. In fact, the story of Emmaus is walking and
waiting, whether we are still grieving someone lost who was dear to us and we
wonder when if ever we will feel happy again.
Emmaus again is wherever we meet the Risen Christ in ordinary moments and
Easter comes to dwell in us. The Emmaus story helps us understand the Lord's
presence where, often before, we had experienced His absence. In light of the
Emmaus story, all of us come to recognize that we do not walk alone. This story can also be seen as symbolic of
the Eucharist. The disciples encounter Jesus on the way. They express their
disillusionment and sense of helplessness as they walk the road to nowhere.
It seems at time that we are alone but Jesus is with us at
all times and in all situations. We need
to be ready to recognize him entering our lives so that we can respond
appropriately to Him. Jesus wants to
communicate with us and he speaks to us and is truly present in the
Scriptures. They must be an integral
part of every disciple's life. We pray
that they may set our hearts on fire. More specifically, Jesus is present among
us in all our sacramental celebrations but especially in the Eucharist. Our sharing of this Bread is a symbol of our
unity as brothers and sisters in Jesus.
It is also a symbol of our participation in the work and mission of
Jesus, whose body was broken in the love and service of others.
Happy Sunday
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