May 8, 2011 — 3rd Sunday of Easter
First Reading – Acts 2: 14, 22-33
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice, and proclaimed: “You who are Jews, indeed all of you staying in Jerusalem. Let this be known to you, and listen to my words.You who are Israelites, hear these words. Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs, which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it. For David says of him: I saw the Lord ever before me, with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed. Therefore my heart has been glad and my tongue has exulted; my flesh, too, will dwell in hope, because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.
“My brothers, one can confidently say to you about the patriarch David that he died and was buried, and his tomb is in our midst to this day. But since he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld nor did his flesh see corruption. God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses. Exalted at the right hand of God, he received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father and poured him forth, as you see and hear.”
Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 118
R. (11a) Lord, you will show us the path of life.
Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge; I say to the LORD, “My Lord are you.”
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup, you it is who hold fast my lot.
R. Lord, you will show us the path of life.
I bless the LORD who counsels me; even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me; with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
R. Lord, you will show us the path of life.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body, too, abides in confidence;
because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
R. Lord, you will show us the path of life.
You will show me the path to life, abounding joy in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever.
R. Lord, you will show us the path of life.
Second Reading—1 Peter 1: 17-19
Beloved: If you invoke as Father him who judges impartially according to each one’s works, conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning, realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb. He was known before the foundation of the world but revealed in the final time for you, who through him believe in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Gospel – Luke 24: 13-25
That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?” And he replied to them, “What sort of things?”
They said to him, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see.”
And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
Reflection
That the author describes these two men as “disciples of Jesus,” indicates that they had been part of the inner cadre of followers during Jesus’ public ministry, a fact confirmed at the end of the story when we see them running to tell the 11 apostles of their encounter. At this time in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus had not yet appeared to the disciples—earlier that morning, Mary, Peter, and some others had witnessed the empty tomb, but no sign of the risen Lord—so the core nucleus of apostles and friends was hiding behind locked door for fear of persecution. For the two disciples to know where to find the apostles emphasizes just how close they must have been with Jesus—and makes all the more astounding the fact that they failed to perceive him standing right in front of them. So why didn’t they recognize him?
The disciples are engaged in the very same activity with which many of us humans respond to tragedy—they are trying to make sense of it all. The author of the story tells us that they are “conversing and debating about all the things that had occurred.” No doubt these two, like many who had come to follow Jesus, had left behind family, friends, possibly even their jobs, to become part of this movement, a movement that just days before had seen their leader
carried triumphantly into the capital city, Jerusalem. But within a matter of hours, the cause to which they had devoted the past months and years of their lives came crashing down, its spirit utterly sapped and its leadership cowering in a hidden room for fear of further violence.
One can easily imagine the topics of their discussion: How had Jesus gone from being carried triumphantly into the capital city, to being put to death by public demand a matter of days later? And what did Jesus’ death mean for the movement? His preaching had focused on the message, i.e. how we were to live in relationship with God and others—was that message rendered invalid by the grim reality of the Cross? ( One thinks of the sort of conversations undoubtedly held by followers of Socrates or Dr. Martin Luther King in the days after each’s untimely passing, and how they must have sought to make sense of event and figure out what to do next.)
Into this intellectual analysis of tragedy, Jesus inserts himself in a radical, immanent way, but it is this very academic exercise that prevents the disciples from realizing that he is literally present before their eyes. So focused were the disciples on their own pre-conception of the Messiah, (“We had hoped…”) that they were incapable of recognizing the actual Messiah standing next to them. They were so consumed by the calamity of Calvary that they could not begin to make sense of the promise of the empty tomb.
Their plight is ours. Too often in life, we allow ourselves to become enveloped by the pain of a given tragedy—the loss of a loved one; the end of a long-term relationship; the failure to get a hoped-for job—that we blind ourselves to the reality of God present in front of us. At times, we become utterly absorbed by the apparent absence of God—we focus myopically on how badly it hurts to suffer a broken heart or to experience rejection from a job, and we simply push aside the possibility that it is part of God’s plan. Indeed, the disciples on the road to Emmaus depict an archetype of our human designs and need for things to make sense; they KNEW what it meant for Jesus to be Messiah, and so when it turned out that the facts no longer fit their understanding, they were left struggling to find a logical explanation. We may think we KNOW what it means for a given situation to “work out” for the best—getting this particular job; marrying this particular person; etc. and when it does not, we can become so caught up in an intellectual analysis of “what went wrong” that we close ourselves off to the possibility that something very important went RIGHT.
It can be tempting to over-analyze a situation—What went wrong? What could we have done to prevent this pain?—to get stuck in our own heads, and in so doing, to prevent ourselves from recognizing God’s ability to transform tragedy into triumph. The message of Easter is that the Resurrection, not the Cross, was the point. But in order to see this, our eyes must be open.
Reflection Questions
1. Have you ever experienced a tragedy so profound that you struggled to see any good in it? Do you still feel that way? Where do you think God was/is at work in that experience?
2. When a tragedy occurs, be it a personal loss or a wide-spread disaster (e.g. Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Japan, etc.), do you try to make sense of the occurrence? Do you think this helps? Do you trust that these things are part of God’s plan? Why/not?
3. What sorts of impediments do you occasionally struggle with in seeing where God is at work in your life? Do you feel like you are open to things working out?
