Reflection from Fr. John for 3rd Sunday Easter on Gospel Luke 24:13-35

Hearts were broken and heads were spinning for the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

• They didn’t know it was Easter.
• They heard stories that the tomb was empty
• They had heard rumors about angels appearing to the women

But they hadn’t seen any angels, much less the Risen Christ.

They were walking and talking, trying to figure it out together. Their worlds had collapsed. They didn’t know it was Easter.

It hasn’t felt much Easter for us as we try to piece together the collapse our worlds due to the Pandemic.

Like the disciples so much seems lost and gone—lost lives, lost jobs and savings.

The death of Jesus was a disaster just as this time has been a disaster for so many.

A stranger joins them on the road, joins them in their journey of despair; joins them “without invitation, without hesitation,” as the poet says.

He asks, “What are you discussing?” They can’t believe it.

It’s like someone asking us, what’s all the talk been about these days?

There’s a kind of conversation that’s called casual. It’s the conversation of everyday life. It’s the conversation that says: How you doing? What’s going on? How’s the family?

Jesus started with casual conversation, but there was nothing casual about their conversation.

But even casual conversation has its purpose. It brings us into communion with one another.

Communion is what we’ve all been longing for during this time of isolation and of not going to church.

The casual and not so casual conversation was soon to bring the two disciples into communion with Jesus in the Breaking of the Bread.

It can’t be soon enough for us to back to church and be in communion with Jesus and one another.

For if nothing else during this time, we’ve come to realize that streaming masses and that Virtual presence is not the same. It’s not the Real thing as is the Presence of Christ in the Breaking of the Bread and the presence of one another in the pews.

Jesus turns the conversation to what the poet Michael Sparough describes as “gently chiding, strongly guiding, weaving a story of glory hidden within…prophecies of faith.”

Our conversations also hold the possibility of discovering the hidden glory of God during this crisis.

As St. Ignatius says that the journey to God is about “Finding God in all things.” It’s finding God, not just in sunsets and nature, but finding God after the experience of Good Friday, finding God in our sufferings and crucifixions, finding God not just in empty tombs, but our own emptiness.

For this time of Coronavirus has reminded us that we are not immune from life’s difficulties.

On the road Jesus teaches the two disciples that not all good news feels good—telling them that Christ had to suffer these things to enter His glory.

There is Good News for us to discover in this time of suffering even though it may not feel good.

Martin Luther King Jr. talked about the “power of God to transform the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope.”

“Were not our hearts burning within us?”

It was the power of God that transformed the hearts of those two disciples from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope.

We know the fatigue of this Pandemic. We also know the power of God to raise up Jesus. We trust in that same power to raise us up from fatigue to hope.

Filled with the buoyancy of hope the two disciples returned to Jerusalem. They had walked away from Jerusalem, walked away for suffering and death. Now they were returning with the buoyancy that comes from hope.

The poet Jack Gilbert writes, “The walking back was the arriving.”

They had walked away and now they were walking back, arriving at a new place of faith and hope.

It’s our hope that when we are able to walk back from this moment we will arrive at a place of hope and joy.