30-Mar-2008
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
Sunday Reflections: Third Sunday of Easter -Journeying with God-a different
way! 06-Apr-2008
Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; Peter 1: 17-21;
Luke 24: 13-35;
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.
I never knew what things were like.....
An old novel tells the story of a wealthy woman who travelled the world over,
visiting museums and art galleries, meeting people and viewing the sights. Soon
she became completely bored. Then she met a man who had none of the world's
goods, but a great love of beauty and a sincere appreciation of it. In his
company the world looked entirely different to her. At one point she told him,
"I never knew what things were like until you taught me how to look at them".
In every love story, there comes a point when the lover says that to the
beloved, either directly or indirectly. –Peter suggests a different way of
looking at Christ to the Israelites confronted with the resurrection.
Harold Buetow in 'God Still Speaks: Listen!'
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
There is a legend along the Rhine that on a dark and cold night a thinly clad,
half starved man was toiling along one of its rugged paths. He looked with
wistful eye at the bright light streaming from the windows of the mansion, and
listened to the sounds of feasting and strains of music. He had left the home
of his youth in early life, and heard nothing from it for many years. He knew
not that the magnificent property was his father's and that he was the heir.
Desperate he asked for shelter there. At its gate he found an old servant who
discovered who he was. Instantly he was ushered into the gaiety. His robes were
changed to those of the heir. He had found his heritage. And so the Christian
is often ignorant of all that belongs to him as a son of God.
Anthony Castle in 'More Quotes and Anecdotes'
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 present 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 listened 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.
"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
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
PS. The stories, incidents and anecdotes used in the reflections have been
collected over the years from books as well as from sources over the net and
from e-mails received. Every effort is made to acknowledge authors whenever
possible. If you send in stories or illustrations I would be grateful if you
could quote the source as well so that they can be acknowledged if used in
these reflections. These reflections are also available on my web site
www.netforlife.net Thank you.
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