THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
23 APRIL 2023
Today
we meet two of the disciples of Jesus leaving Jerusalem and heading to the
village of Emmaus. In their walk, a
stranger joins them and wants to know what they are talking about. They tell the stranger about their
hopes. They had been become followers of
Jesus of Nazareth, because they had recognized him as a great prophet, mighty
in deed and word. They had hoped that he
would be the one to redeem Israel. That
hope had been reinforced when he had entered Jerusalem a week before. People had spread palm branches and their
garments on his path and hailed him as the Messiah, singing “Hosanna to the Son
of David.”
Then those
hopes have been completely crushed. They
tell him that the chief priests and religious authorities handed him over to
the Romans, who executed him in the cruelest and most humiliating way possible
by crucifying him. They had to spend the
next day, the Sabbath, in utter despair and had to wait until the first day of
the week to get out of Jerusalem. They
have so completely lost their hope that they cannot believe the women who found
the tomb empty and reported that a vision of angels had reported that he is
alive.
The
stranger begins to speak to them. In
reviewing the Scriptures, the stranger points out that all the authentic
prophets of Israel had been rejected. He
gently points out that Jesus of Nazareth is more than a prophet. In opening their eyes to the Scriptures, he
expands their limited concept of the mission of the Messiah. He had come not to expel the Romans, but to
endure suffering and death to allow him to enter into his true glory. As they listen with their ears, their hearts
begin to burn within them, and they invite him to stay with them when they
reach Emmaus. At table, the stranger
does exactly what he had done at the multiplication of the loaves and the
fishes and at the Last Supper they had shared with him. When he takes bread, blesses it, breaks it,
and gives it to them, their eyes are opened, and they recognize the stranger as
the risen Lord. Their hope is expanded
in an unexpected way, and they rush back to Jerusalem .
Hope is a
gift from God. When their limited hopes
are destroyed, the risen Lord gives them the gift of hope that will sustain
them in their new role as members of the Body of Christ. In addition, hope is a gift that must be
shared. The two disciples return
immediately to Jerusalem. With this new
hope, they ignore the dangers of traveling at night. They pass through the fear that the
authorities will arrest them as followers of Jesus of Nazareth. They share their encounter with the risen
Lord with the others in Jerusalem who had lost their hope.
That is why
we celebrate these fifty days of Easter every year. Life has a way of upending our expectations
and robbing us of hope. Like those two
disciples, we hear the Lord speaking to us in his Word now as we gather to
celebrate the Eucharist. Our eyes are
opened when the priest takes bread, blesses the Father for the sacrificial love
of Jesus made present as we remember it, breaks it, and gives it to us. After encountering the risen Lord’s real
presence in this Eucharist, we too are sent out to celebrate the Lord’s gift of
hope and share it with others.
On this
weekend, our second graders are given the gift of the Eucharist for the first
time. They have been looking forward to
this day for months. In their
excitement, they can teach us a valuable lesson about hope. Like those two disciples, we can easily
become discouraged and lose hope. In our
very busy lives, we rush around and fail to recognize the risen Lord in those we
encounter on a daily basis. The Lord
works through our children to remind us of how important it is to take time
every Sunday to listen to him and recognize him in the breaking of bread. With them, we renew our hope in the Paschal
Mystery of the Lord, whose death and resurrection (the Paschal Mystery) remain
at the heart of everything we believe as disciples.
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