Fullerton T

Third Sunday of Easter

We gather this weekend after the solemn celebration of Easter and Divine Mercy Sundays, we also remember that the celebration of Easter continues until Pentecost Sunday and then Easter Time ends and the paschal candle is placed near the baptismal font.  In the first Reading we are told that Peter’s preaching on Pentecost centered on the firm belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah and had been raised from the dead by God the Father. In this reading, he proclaims these truths as the fulfillment of ancient prophecies. In the second reading from the 1^st letter of st Peter the apostle reminds believers of the great price Jesus Christ paid for their redemption, helping us to remember and never forget the depth of the Lord’s love for all of us all the time.

This Sunday’s gospel recounts the Jesus appearance on the evening of Easter to two disciples who were going from Jerusalem to Emmaus, their life with Jesus had ended abruptly as all seemed to be lost after the events of Good Friday.  Jesus, their beloved Leader, friend and Teacher, had been arrested, tried, sentenced, tortured and killed. Now they are feeling that without his presence, his inspiration, his support and encouragement, they simply cannot go on.  They are so disappointed and disillusioned about what has happened that they have even decided to leave the Church, the community of his followers. Slowly but surely, they are walking away from it all. They are putting Jerusalem and the other disciples behind them. They are heading for the village of Emmaus, to start a new and different way of life. And there Jesus was walking along with them they were talking about what had happened in Jerusalem and how they had put Jesus to death. Jesus explained all the passages of scripture that were about himself, but it was only at the breaking of the bread that they recognized him. They then went back to tell the others that they had seen the Lord and told their story and how they recognized him at the breaking of the bread.

The Emmaus story is the story of you and me as the two disciples represent all of us who claim that we are Christians with all our doubts and disagreements our joys and sorrows. We come together in faith each Sunday in answer to a call, often a quiet murmur from the recesses of our hearts which calls out to us saying come to me you who are weary and overburdened and I will give you rest.  All of us are searching just as the companions on the road to Emmaus were and they were weary as a result of all that had happened to them. As we are often weary of the things that happen to us as well as the things we see going on in the world at the present time. The people of God come together for a great and good purpose and that is to seek God and what he wants us to do. All of us work together for God’s kingdom since the kingdom provides meaning and purpose. In the scripture readings we find explanations and understanding of events and relationships which have shaped the faith from the beginning. Our faith is lived out in the real world, the world of family, work, and recreation. We don’t live in two separate worlds, one spiritual and the other secular.  

Those who would have us believe that we can separate our lives into two compartments are mistaken as faith and life go together.  The fellowship we share helps us ask questions of faith.  It is the application of scriptures to the events of our own times that reveal that God is walking with us and maybe even working through us.  But it is in the breaking of bread that we recognize Jesus who is with us on our journey.  The journey on the road to Emmaus is the journey we make as gods people.  We are on this journey in fellowship with one another being led by Jesus who calls out to us to follow him from the Cross of Good Friday as well as from the empty tomb of Easter Sunday. As we grow in faith, we are led to understand those past events as we experience them in our time and place and they are as relevant today as they were when they first took place.   The Risen Lord uses so much gentleness with us! He doesn’t oblige us to ‘believe’ but He offers us the things that enable us to judge based on the measure of our own hearts. As St Augustine extraordinarily wrote in the opening of his Confessions ‘our heart is restless until it rests in you’ May our encounter with the Risen Jesus make us compassionate fellow travelers attentive to the struggles of others, ready to listen, and eager to share our faith in His Resurrection as we move forward in faith.