Third Sunday of Easter
Dear Friends,
In today’s Gospel when two disciples (unknowingly) meet Our Lord on the road to Emmaus, they tell him that it has been three days since the Passion and death of Jesus in Jerusalem, and that they have just heard the astounding rumor that the tomb is empty and that Jesus has been raised. You would think that this news would have filled them with hope and kept them in Jerusalem, and yet—here they are, walking on the road away from Jerusalem on Easter Sunday, despondent and unmoved. They don’t even recognize Jesus standing before them, when just a few days earlier they had been hoping that he was the Messiah. When Jesus calls them “foolish and slow of heart,” he is certainly justified! But he does not give up on them. After listening to their experience, he patiently opens the scriptures to them and explains how and why the events surrounding his death had to unfold as they did. When they reach Emmaus, they invite Jesus to stay with them, and it is only in response to this earnest invitation that he reveals himself to them in the breaking of the bread.
When I hear about the many accounts of the aftermath of Jesus’s resurrection in the gospels—the apostles encountering the empty tomb, Mary Magdalen meeting the risen Christ, Jesus appearing to the twelve in the upper room—I like to think that I would be one of the hope-filled faithful who could embrace the truth of the resurrection right away. But I have a feeling I would be much more like these two on the road to Emmaus—a bit confused, slow, and reluctant to transform my life in the light of the new reality of the Gospel. That’s honestly how I often respond to the Gospel in my daily life: I have the scriptural accounts of the prophets and eyewitnesses, I have the sacraments and Jesus present in his Church, and sometimes I still find myself shrugging and walking away to do my own thing.
But Jesus is so generous and patient! He meets us where we are and reminds us of the truth. He walks with us and accompanies us even when our hearts are slow to recognize who he is. And when we plead with him to “stay with us,” he doesn’t scoff at the irony of this and say, “But you didn’t stay with me! You fell asleep in the garden, you left me alone at the cross, you didn’t believe that I had risen even after I promised that I would!” No. He stays with us, and he gives himself to us completely and intimately in a humble form that we can digest—bread.
Today as we see the Eucharist blessed and broken on the altar, let’s ask for the grace for our hearts to “burn within us,” that we may recognize Jesus for who he is, and that we may have the courage to allow him to encounter us and transform us.
Jule Heffernan
Communications Director
