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Dear Friend, One of our common
experiences is that life is full of journeys. There are short routine
journeys -like going to the market place, going shopping, going to work, and
the longer journeys, like coming home after being abroad or in a distant land
for a long time, or going to an unknown destination. There are those who
journey for adventure and experiencing new places. There are also those who
go on pilgrimages, hopefully journeying towards God. Have we begun our
journey to God? Have a joyous weekend journeying with God! Fr. Jude Botelho |
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Today’s first reading from the Acts of the
Apostles relates the essential points of all the early Christians preaching
of the faith. The main points highlighted were, firstly, that Jesus’
suffering and dying on the cross was essential and fitted God’s plan of
salvation and was not an accident. Secondly, the resurrection was not an
afterthought but central to the plan of God. The death of Jesus bewildered
the apostles but the resurrection put everything into proper perspective.
Thirdly, the Spirit that animated the apostles after Pentecost was the Spirit
of Christ that lives in and animates the church till today. Peter who
preaches this Pentecostal sermon has himself come a long way from the time
when he rebuked Jesus for speaking about his passion and suffering. The
resurrection has changed all that for Peter and for us. In the second reading from
Peter’s letter to the Christians of the Dispersion, Peter seeks to encourage
them to hold on to the basic tenets of the faith especially in times of
trials. It is basically a call to holiness of life. It exhorts Christians to
have a basic reverence to the Father who has no favourites and will judge
everyone in fairness according to each ones deeds. What should guide us
constantly is the fact that we have been saved, ransomed, not by silver or
gold but by the priceless blood of the Lord Jesus Christ poured out for our
salvation. A very good reason for our faith and hope in God is that God
raised Jesus from the dead and will do the same for us if we believe and
trust in him. In simple terms the reading recalls to Christians the cost of
redemption, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. We cannot therefore
forget our obligation to our Lord and Saviour who died for us. Finding Our Inheritance In today’s gospel two of the disciples struggle to make sense of the recent event: the death of Jesus. They cannot understand why he had to suffer and die. They had pinned all their hopes on him and now they were frustrated and so they leave Jerusalem and try to find solace and meaning somewhere else, Emmaus. As they journey they encounter a stranger who questions them and listens to their disappointments and disillusionments. In their story it becomes clear that they cannot hold the two things together: their hope in Jesus and his death. The death of Jesus wipes away all hope for them. They feel helpless and hopeless. Like most people they believe that if you haven’t achieved what you had set out to do before your death, you will never achieve it in death either. Death is the end of the road of hope and promise. Now they are mourning not only the death of Jesus but the death of their relationship with him. The stranger, who had joined them, is Jesus, who enters into their lives and ours without our knowing or recognizing him. He listens and questions them so that they pour out their story with all its hopelessness. Only when they have finished their story does the stranger begin his own. He invites them to look at the past again, this time in the light of scripture. He gives a wholly different interpretation of the same event as he sees the death of Christ as something which was essential for his rising in glory. According to the stranger, the death of Jesus was the achievement of his mission –not the collapse of it. What the stranger does is to make them see things differently, with faith and with hope. That vision does not change the past but the new perspective changes their response to the past event. Old Experience, new meaning Maude and Harry have been happily married for six years. It
hasn’t been bliss all the way, but they’ve become the best of friends in
their struggle to live a genuine life together with their two children. One
evening Harry is having a drink with his old friend, John, who was best man
at their wedding. As they exchange notes on married life Harry tells John how
he has loved Maude from the first moment he set his eyes on her. John
contradicts him. He says, “Harry, old son, you’ve forgotten I introduced you
to Maude. Remember? You heard her talking at a party I was giving, and when
you heard her rabbiting on, you said that whoever married her would be
marrying a mobile Oxford English dictionary!” –Which of them is right? John
remembers the event as it was then. But Harry remembers it as something more
– an event that led to where he is now. Because Harry is in love now, he
takes that love back in time, and invests the past with a new significance.
His relationship with Maude now affects the way he remembers their
beginnings: he gives their first meeting a new significance it never had at
the time because he reads it in the light of his presence love. His love
actually changes the past. What appears to be a chance encounter becomes the
most important meeting of his life. In today’s gospel, the two disciples meet
Jesus who makes them see things differently and suddenly they understand it
all with eyes of faith. The events remain the same but they have changed and
they see the old experience with new meaning. Denis McBride in ‘Seasons of the Word’ Finding Jesus Today Regina Riley tells the story of a woman who for years prayed
that her two sons would return to the faith. Then one Sunday morning in
church she couldn’t believe her eyes. Her two sons came in and sat across the
aisle from her. Her joy and gratitude overflowed. Afterwards she asked her
sons what prompted their return to the faith. The younger son told the story.
One Sunday morning, while vacationing in Colorado, they were driving down a mountain
road. It was raining cats and dogs. Suddenly they came upon an old man
without an umbrella, who was soaked through and through, who walked with a
noticeable limp. Yet he trudged doggedly along the road. The brothers stopped
and picked him up. It turned out that the stranger was on his way to Mass at
a church three miles down the road. The brothers took him there. Since the
rain was coming down so hard, and since there was nothing better to do, they
decided to wait for the stranger to take him home after Mass. It wasn’t long
before the boys figured that they might as well go inside, rather than wait
out in the car. As the two brothers listened to the reading of the scriptures
and sat through the breaking of the bread, something moved them deeply. The only
way they could explain it was: “You know, Mother, it felt so right. Like
getting home after a long, tiring trip.” -The story of the two brothers, and
their encounter with a stranger on the Colorado road, bears a striking
resemblance to today’s gospel. Like the two brothers, the disciples were on a
journey disillusioned by the happenings of the day. Then they met a stranger
who opened their eyes, as he listen to them and made them understand the
deeper meaning of the events taking place, till they recognized him in the
breaking of bread. The stranger spoke to the brothers not by using words but
by his heroic example. Mark Link in ‘Sunday Homilies’ As the stranger in the Gospel helps the two disciples to make
sense of the past in a new light, they respond by asking him to stay with
them. When they go in to table they break bread together. The stranger gives
himself away by giving himself to them. He is the risen Jesus, and he leaves
them with hearts that burn and with eyes that see. Not only does he help them
to interpret the past, in their experience of him as Lord, he gives them a
new future. When we gather to celebrate the Eucharist and listen to his word
and break bread together, Jesus comes among us not as a stranger, but rather
in word and sacrament to give us new hope to face the future with faith in
him. We too may have a past that makes no sense and is disappointing. But we
are invited to tell our stories to the Lord, to listen to him speak his word
and to recognize him in the breaking of bread. Too good to be true! “Which of us has not, at least once, walked to the road to
Emmaus, full of uncertainty about Jesus, full of disappointed hopes for his
Church? Again today we are tempted to lose heart. If God is going to lose his
power before our money and machinery, then all that has been said about Jesus
of Nazareth, about his saving power, about his resurrection, must surely be
relegated to the realm of fables? We must frequently walk this road to
Emmaus, however painful the journey – this road which will bring us from
despondency to faith. We must walk it in a twilight atmosphere before
darkness falls. On roads like this we meet a disguised Companion. It is Jesus
himself, who takes us just as we are, and who, at times, questions us at
length. A long road is a good place to share confidence with a fellow
traveller! Jesus has much to discuss with us concerning our destiny and his,
and how we can enter into glory only by the gate of the cross. But he will do
more than talk with us; he will break bread for us in that Eucharistic
banquet at which the scriptures take on their full significance and reveal
the true features of him who is their completion and fulfilment. Jesus
vanishes from sight the instant his identity is revealed by the Eucharistic
signs celebrated in memory of his Passover. From now on there is more for the
disciples to do than just gaze on his human features. They must begin being
heralds of the good news that over there –beyond death –the Lord is forever
alive.” – Glenstal Bible
Missal The Grass is Greener In one of the Peanuts comic strips, Lucy and Linus
are standing before a hill. Lucy says that one day she will go over the hill
and find the answer to her dreams. But Linus answers with his usual realism.
He says that perhaps there is another little kid on the other side of the
hill who thinks that all the answers to life lie on this side of the hill.
The point of this Peanuts parable is that life always seems better on
the other side of the hill. The grass is always greener in another field.
-Might not this parable be applied to the two disciples on their way to
Emmaus, and in some sense to us? The two disciples were leaving Jerusalem
disappointed by the events that had happened not quite what the disciple had
expected, and so they were on they were on their way to Emmaus in search of
the other side of the hill of Calvary. Perhaps there they could find the
fulfilment of their dreams for success. Are we much different from Lucy
looking beyond some grassy hill? Are we much different from the two disciples
who left Jerusalem for Emmaus? How many times have we expected one thing and
then experienced something else? Today’s gospel should open our eyes to
recognize Jesus in the challenges and opportunities of today. Albert Cylwicki in ‘His Word Resounds’ May we discover Jesus as the
stranger in our midst, who listens to us and opens our eyes! Fr. Jude
Botelho |
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Other Sunday Homily Websites Daily Reflections Immaculate Heart Retreat Center Gospel Commentary from Ireland Daily Scripture |
Recent
Sunday Reflections Second Sunday of Easter 30-March. 2008 Maundy Thursday 20-March. 2008 Fifth Sunday of Lent 09-March. 2008 Second Sunday of the Year 20-Jan. 2008
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