April 18 – 3rd Sunday of Easter
“On their return from Emmaus, the disciples began to tell the eleven Apostles and their companions what had happened on the road … As they were still talking about it, he himself was there among them”.
If we are to trust Luke’s text, they surely had a hard time going with the obvious, to recognize that it was really him, in the flesh and in bone and not a spirit or some kind of ghost. They had to touch the reality of his presence with their fingers, and resume contact with him in the simplest, most concrete gestures of their daily lives. “Do you have something to eat?” And he ate. They had to rediscover his friendship, a friendship unlike any they had ever known before, a friendship from which, in the dismay of the last few days, they had distanced themselves. A friendship that Peter had even renounced to avoid embarrassment. A friendship, however, which they found intact, without any reproach and which, in the light of Easter, on the other side of death, now appeared to them in all this dimension of which he himself had spoken: “There is no greater love than to give one’s life for those one loves. ” He was there, himself, in their midst.
“Peace be with you,” he told them. As he had said one evening on the lake, joining them after a storm so less overwhelming than the last week. And so, says Luke, “he opened their minds to the understanding of the Scriptures,” as he had done on the road to Emmaus, which was still being talked about. He opened their minds to them. It was much more than just an intellectual exercise. “Wasn’t our heart all hot when he spoke to us,” the people of Emmaus had said. This is, it seems to me, like an invitation to understand, in the etymological sense, that is to say “to take with”. An invitation to let yourself be transformed by this new breath of God who had resurrected him, and who was going, in a way, to recreate the universe. An invitation to let yourself be enveloped in this light that accompanies it and which would henceforth illuminate all the roads that pass through death. To infinitely enlarge the horizons of the human vocation and to reveal to every man, every woman until the end of time, the meaning of life.
We know the rest. They were the witnesses he expected. Witnesses, not only of an empty tomb, witnesses above all of a new life inaugurated by Him and to which they were beginning to be born. The most compelling evidence of his resurrection was the very existence of these men and women, far more than their words, which we continue to reread and scrutinize with such care. It is still so. What speaks best to us about the Risen Lord is our lives as men and women. Simple but true gestures from one or the other of our sisters or brothers. This little light in the depths of oneself which valiantly resists storms and the grayness of everyday life. Like the Apostles, we are called to recognize the Risen One.
We would like, like them, to see the Risen One, like Thomas touch his wounds. Today it comes in the face of men and women, especially those suffering from Covid. Remember Matthew 25: “When did we see you naked, sick, stranger, hungry? “. Then we can recognize the Risen One from the Scriptures. The main thing, Luke tells us, is not to see but to hear. And Jesus entrusted us with this word, addressed to Thomas: “Happy are those who believe without having seen”. It would be logical for this Word to urge us to proclaim the wonders of God to all men across the universe, to bear witness to this Christ who makes us live. Finally, this mystery of presence in absence is also that of the Eucharist. “The Mystery of Faith is great”.
Remember again those of Emmaus: it is when he breaks the bread that their eyes are opened. It is also given to us to recognize him in the breaking of the bread. But this is not magic. This recognition can only be done by a Church and believers animated by the Spirit of the Risen One, trying to live, like him, the sharing of a given life, of a missionary life. This is today’s meditation on the Resurrection of Jesus … No, this is not a ghost story, although the presence of Jesus is mysterious. We know full well that it is real, and we didn’t wait until this morning to find out. Even on our sometimes winding roads, there is always Someone coming our way. All the week,, with the Sisters, we sang this beautiful hymn: “Happy are those who have seen the Risen One and recognized by his wounds, victory. But happy are we to believe without seeing seen and, without seeing it yet, to love Jesus our Savior, Lord, you are alive, we have recognized you; on the last day we will see you. ” By resuming this morning the actions he told us to do again in memory of him, may we rediscover his presence, his peace and his joy.