Third Sunday of Easter

We Tell the Story

I believe and feel that we are all on an extended Emmaus walk. We feel loss, heartache, disappointment. We are grieving. We have been hoping for so many things. My grandnephew is so disappointed that he has to wait to make his First Communion. He wrote Father a letter asking him to “hurry things up” so that he could receive Jesus. Our eleven catechumens are waiting to be baptized. Some in our parish have changed the date of their wedding multiple times. We haven’t been able to celebrate Masses of Resurrection for our dead in the way we are accustomed to.

The comment I hear and read most often from so many of you is how much you miss the Eucharist. Live-streamed liturgies are good, but it isn’t the same without receiving Jesus. Perhaps we, like the disciples after the Resurrection, do not recognize Jesus walking with us, especially in this pandemic. Our lives too have been so disrupted. The way we think it should be just isn’t. And we don’t know what to expect or when to expect it. We fear that we have lost Jesus.

One word that I hear more and more these days is “pivot.” To pivot is to be grounded in one way and also to be agile and able to move in any direction needed. So how might we be asked to “pivot” in our understanding of how Jesus is present to us? What is it that keeps us from recognizing him?

We can probably name all the ways we experience the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic liturgy—in the assembly, in the presider, in the Word and in the Eucharist. In these extraordinary times, we experience all of these in different ways. Different does not mean deficient. Are we recognizing Jesus accompanying us in our trials and tribulations, in the everyday experiences of work, family, health and safety? Are we recognizing Jesus in the re-creation of the earth, in the beauty and the bounty of nature?

The disciples walked with a stranger and expressed their feelings. They listened to the stranger tell stories—re-casting the experience they related. The narrative began to sound familiar so they asked the stranger to stay. Then in the breaking of the bread their eyes were opened and their hearts were burning. They were awakened to JOY.

The story is familiar. The story lives on in us. Today we are asked to “pivot”—to transform despair into hope, weariness into refreshment, our desire to give up into perseverance and resilience, and to recognize Easter JOY! We are living the Paschal Mystery! How do we tell the story? How is He alive in us and to us?