Recognizing the Risen One

Does this scenario sound familiar? A person walks up to you, says hello, and begins speaking to you like an old friend. They look familiar, but you can’t quite place them. After a while, maybe because of something they said or because you had to ask, you realize who they are: maybe a friend from your school days, or a colleague from an old job, or a relative from a different city or state. The reason you didn’t recognize them right away is that you weren’t expecting to encounter them in that particular place or time.

In today’s Gospel story, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus don’t recognize Jesus. Although they spend a considerable amount of time in his presence, although their hearts are “burning” within them as they realize later, they can’t place him until the very end of the story. This isn’t the only time this has happened. In fact, in the Gospel stories of Jesus’s appearances after his Resurrection, it happens three different times. The first time is when Mary Magdalene sees Jesus on Easter morning near the tomb on but doesn’t recognize him; she thinks maybe he’s the gardener. Then later, in the Gospel of John, Peter and John and some of the other disciples are back in Galilee fishing; Jesus asks them if they’ve caught anything, and they don’t recognize who is speaking to them.

In between those two stories is today’s Gospel. We should ask ourselves: why do all of these disciples not recognize Jesus? After all, this was their Master, the one for whom they had given up everything to be his disciples. Did Jesus look so different? Well, perhaps he did – after all, his body had died and was now risen, so that “death no longer has any power over him” (Rom 6:9). But while the glorified and risen body of Jesus might have looked different in some way, perhaps we could also say that part of the explanation is the disciples themselves. Like the scenario I described at the beginning, we don’t always recognize someone we’re not expecting to encounter.

Maybe the simple answer is that the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus after the Resurrection because they thought he was dead. Even after hearing that maybe somehow he was risen they still believed wholly or in part that he was dead. It took an encounter with a person truly alive to help them to see – a person truly alive who made them, in turn, come alive. The Emmaus story is about the reality of the Resurrection – and what that change means for us, not for Jesus. As we heard, these disciples are so radically changed – so filled with joy and faith – that after Jesus disappears from their midst, they go straight back to Jerusalem – despite the fact that they had just left there, afraid or dismayed, despite the fact that apparently it’s late in the day, and it’s a seven mile journey one way. No matter – they go right back to the apostles in the Upper Room to tell them what has happened to them. The disciples recognized the one who had been changed, who had been dead but now was alive, and having encountered him, *they* are changed as well.

Lelio Orsi, Road to Emmaus (c. 1565)

So, friends, perhaps we should ask ourselves, “Well, what about me? Do I feel changed in this Easter season? Is my faith strengthened? Have I been relieved in some way of my fears and troubles in light of Jesus’s Resurrection? Have I encountered the Risen Lord in a new way?” I hope the answer for all of us is, “Yes.” But if not, ask yourself, “Why?” The pandemic has made things tough, and we don’t have the opportunity to come to the Mass right now. That’s a big loss, but it’s too simple to blame everything on that. Instead, if we aren’t feeling enlivened right now – if we are lacking in faith, giving in to fear and dismay – then perhaps we first need to acknowledge that we aren’t really looking for the Risen Christ. Maybe we’re seeking distraction or fulfillment in something else, something earthly, with our faith becoming not much more than lip service. Maybe we are like those on the road to Emmaus, running away from events that we don’t understand.

And if that’s where we find ourselves – if we stop to recognize that it is we who are in need of being changed – then surely the Lord is also already there in our midst to help us to recognize him, in turn. Perhaps he is opening again the Scriptures, so that we can encounter him in a new way in the pages of God’s written Word. Perhaps he helps us to realize his Real Presence in the Eucharist, the breaking of the sacrificial bread, for which our hearts should grow fonder in this time of absence. Perhaps he accompanies us in the quiet journey of prayer, where he helps us to realize that – of all events in the world, past and present, of all the things of time and history – his Resurrection stands above all. Do we realize that? Or are we still looking for him among the dead?

Friends, this Emmaus story is our story. In the breaking of the bread of this Eucharist, let us look with new recognition on the Risen Lord present to us. The great challenges of this time need not fill us with fear or dismay if we see that Jesus has come to be in our midst. Instead, with hearts burning with faith, let us go and announce to others just Whom we have come to recognize along our way.

Living Proof

Proof can be a tricky thing. We depend upon it for many things, but it can be hard to come by. Just take the current pandemic, for instance. Scientists and researchers are searching hard for both a cure for the disease and for a vaccine, but they have to prove such measures would be effective before they can prescribe them. Some people are trying to find proof of the disease’s origin. There are efforts underway to prove who might have been infected without becoming symptomatic. We all *want* to do something to end this pandemic, but we need hard proof before we can act.

The same can be true in our personal lives too. Every relationship is built on trust, and when that trust is violated – by rejection, betrayal, disappointment, etc. – a new proof must be given for how the relationship can continue. But proving things at the level of personal trust is even harder than proving something scientifically. Friendship requires living proof, you might say, to have the possibility of reconciliation.

Today’s Gospel is all about reconciliation. The end of the Gospel focuses on the figure of Thomas, who comes to believe in the Resurrection only after doubting and insisting on living proof. Perhaps Thomas doubted because he was unwilling to be hurt again ­– because he was caught off guard by the fact that Jesus suffered and died, despite the fact that the Lord had told his disciples that was exactly what was going to happen.

More likely, I think, is that Thomas was deeply aware of his own betrayal – of his abandonment of Jesus in his hour of need. So aggrieved was he by this failure of friendship, that he resisted believing that the Lord was risen again. He needed living proof, in other words, to believe that it was possible to be forgiven of his sin. Thomas, of course, is not alone in this. All of the disciples must have been deeply aware that they had betrayed and abandoned the one who had called them his friends, who had washed their feet in service, who had given them his own Body to eat and Blood to drink at the first Eucharist. But in his hour of need, they let him down, and so they resisted believing, instead hiding in fear behind locked doors.

Giovanni Serodine, Doubting Thomas (c. 1620)

Perhaps this time of pandemic has given us some insight into how they must have felt. In a certain sense, we too are living with fear, quarantined behind locked doors, filled with uncertainty with what has happened to the world. Things that we took for granted are now uncertain; the world holds dangers that we had not before conceived of. This time has also given us an awareness of our own flaws and limitedness. We can’t fix the world; we can’t even fix ourselves. And maybe that realization also affects our faith, and our relationship with God. Perhaps it makes us believe that God isn’t really there to take care of us. Or maybe it’s given us a deeper awareness of how we have put too much trust in the passing things of this world – in our possessions, our pleasures and past-times, in ourselves – and not in him, the One who sustains us in every moment.

And into all of this doubt and uncertainty – whether in the Upper Room two millennia ago, or today in our own circumstances – the Risen Jesus steps into our midst. If Thomas needed living proof of why he could believe, if the disciples needed hope for the possibility of reconciliation, if we need assurance that God still is present despite difficult circumstances, we need not look beyond this very Gospel. Jesus himself is the living proof of God’s power being stronger than all of those failures on our part, our sins and betrayals and doubts. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says. His peace replaces fear, his mercy replaces division, and his Risen Life replaces even the fear of death. But all of it begins with authentic faith in the Lord's Resurrection; faith is the precursor to receiving the fuller gifts that God wants to give to us, like peace and mercy and even a deeper faith than we yet have.

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, a day to focus on how the Risen Christ has given us his mercy in the past and even more how he wants to give it to us anew. We can ask for this mercy in all sorts of ways: “Lord, be merciful and keep my family safe in this dangerous time.” “Lord, be merciful and help me to be healed of this sin that weighs me down.” “Lord, be merciful and allow me to not to give in to fear or doubt or hesitancy in trusting you.” Thomas had a lot of flaws, as we do, but at least he knew where his weakness was, and he was bold enough to ask for he wanted the Lord to give to him.

Divine Mercy (1934) by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski

Friends, in many ways, we have a chance to live out an Easter very close to the circumstances of that first Easter that the disciples knew. In the midst of great uncertainty and great disruption, they came to believe anew in that One who could not be defeated by death or betrayal or hardheartedness – and with whom their friendship endured, despite their own failings. While our world may feel turned on end right now, the Risen Jesus is living proof that God allows the disordering of our lives at times only to bring forth a greater peace and renewed opportunity for faith. May we all call upon the Divine Mercy of the Lord to not remain unbelieving but to believe, and so have life in his name.

An Easter Allegory

For too long now, we have awoken to the same tired reality. We are anxious, isolated from each other, weighed down by fears and distress, yearning for an end to the great suffering under which our society labors. For what feels like ages we have been waiting and hoping for some good news about the terrible disease that plagues us. Though not all of us have yet fallen ill, in a sense, we are all infected by its consequences.

And yet, on this new morning, a glimmer of hope has dawned. There are reports of Good News – that there is One who has found a cure for this terrible disease. How, exactly, is mysterious – but surely we can say the hand of God is at work. This sickness overcame him too, but now he has been raised up and made whole. And what’s more, all who draw near to him are themselves cured as well, healed and restored to life. Even death itself has no power in the face of the healing this One gives.

Let us then rejoice! All around us, there still remain the signs of the disease which ravaged humanity and distorted our way of life. But let us no longer cower in fear or doubt, hidden away within ourselves, unable to see the world as it has been remade. A cure for our ancient illness has been found; the One who gives it can heal all that troubles us.

Let our hope then remove our hesitancy! May we run forth to receive for ourselves this eternal medicine from the One who can give it to us. In praise of God Almighty, in gratitude for this salvation, may we celebrate the newness of life we have found in Him. May we stride confidently onward in our journeys, whole and hale, to share with others the Good News we have received – witnesses to what this One has done for us.

* * *

Friends, this little Easter allegory is in no way intended to minimize the current danger of the coronavirus, or the suffering it is causing, or the importance of continuing to safeguard against it. But it is intended to remind us that there is no disease more devastating than the ancient foe of sin and death, and in his Resurrection, Jesus has given us the cure for that – indeed, He is Himself the Cure. What Good News that is, indeed. Happy Easter!

Henrick de Clerck, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Rottenhammer Resurrection) (c. 1590)

Our Eucharistic Identity

By my count, it’s been a little over three weeks since the faithful last had the chance to receive the Eucharist at Mass. Do you miss the Eucharist yet? I hope so. All of us – even we priests who still get to celebrate Mass – should feel a great sorrow at the current conditions, and a renewed longing for the Eucharist. If we don’t feel that, if we are not hungering for the Body and Blood of the Lord, then perhaps that’s an indication that we haven’t really come to appreciate the gift of Jesus’s Real Presence in the way we should.

I imagine that many of us feel particularly saddened today, on Holy Thursday, to not be able to receive the Lord in the Sacrament which he instituted on this day. But the Eucharist still has great power to nourish us, even if we can’t receive it right now. I remember when I was in the second grade, preparing for First Holy Communion, the teacher told us: “Normally, when we eat food, the food becomes part of our bodies. But with the Body of Christ, it’s different; when we receive the Eucharist, we become part of his Body.”

Meister des Hausbuches, Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles [detail] (1475)

There’s a great truth in that. The Body of Christ is not just something we receive. It’s an identity and a reality we live out. The presence and the power of the Eucharist can nourish us even when we can’t receive it – indeed, perhaps especially then. How? Through loving service. Jesus symbolized that loving service in the washing of feet, but he showed its fullest extent in laying down his life on the Cross. Every day we are offered chances to lay down our lives for each other: spouses for their spouses; parents for their children; children for their siblings; teachers for their students; doctors and nurses for their patients; the contented for those who are brokenhearted; the privileged for those who are needy; the peaceful for those who are in distress. Even when we are in need, there is always someone in even greater need than us, and when we lay down our lives for them, even in some small way – even if only by offering up our sufferings and inconveniences as a prayer to God – whenever we do that, we are reflecting the Eucharistic heart of Jesus. We are living out the Mass, despite the fact we can’t come to it right now.

Friends, Jesus has given us a model of love to follow. In the washing of feet, in the sacrifice of the Cross, we see the meaning of the Eucharist made clear for us. Whether priest or people, we all await the chance to participate together in this Holy Sacrifice. In the meantime, though, let’s look for ways to live out our Eucharistic identity as the Body of Christ, laying down our lives in loving service to those around us.

Not Forsaken

Crucifixion (c. 1665) [detail] by Gabriël Metsu

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” The question of the psalmist today is one that we can relate to in any suffering or trial, but perhaps especially right now. Outside of wartime, it’s rare that there’s some particular crisis which gives so much common cause for pain and sorrow. And yet that’s what our world faces in the corona virus.

That question of Psalm 22 is heard again in the Gospel: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It’s certainly easy to see why Jesus is crying out. He had entered into Jerusalem just a few days before, acclaimed as the Messiah, the son of David, the rightful king of Israel. And only a few days later, betrayed and abandoned by his closest friends, he hangs now upon a cross – almost completely alone, certainly in agony, waiting for his death. It seems like “forsaken” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

And yet, is Jesus really forsaken? Is he really alone? This One who said, “He who sent me is with me; He has not left me alone because I always do the things that please him.” (Jn 8:29)? This One who said, “The hour has come - Father, glorify your Son that he may glorify you?” (Jn 17:1)? Could it be that, in this case, the appearance doesn’t tell the whole story?

That is indeed what the Church believes. When Jesus cries out, he does so not because he feels as if his Father has forgotten about him, or turned his back on him, but because as the Incarnate Son of God he is uniting himself to all of the sorrows of history, all of the pain and dysfunction of the human heart, all of the burden and isolation that comes from human sinfulness. He unites himself to it, and he puts it all to death, there on the Cross, and in doing so redeems us from it. Rather than be abandoned by his Father, he was at that moment carrying out the very purpose for which he had been sent. And at the deepest level of his soul, even in the midst of his suffering, that brought him joy.

The Church Fathers taught that while the Gospels only tell us Jesus spoke the first two lines of Psalm 22, it is very likely he would have gone on to recite the whole thing. That psalm that begins so starkly – with a cry of abandonment – in the end concludes by proclaiming God’s fidelity: "future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn." (Ps 22:30b-31a). And after all, that is what we are commemorating this week, is it not? The reason we call this week “Holy” – the reason we remember at all that agonizing death 2000 years ago – is because we believe that that suffering was not meaningless but the very means by which sin is taken away, the very manner of deliverance from death for us and for all peoples of all times. And when his Son rose again after three days in the tomb, God showed us that our sufferings also can have value. Even in the most dire of straits, they are not meaningless, unseen and unheard by God – no, they too can be part of our redemption wrought in Christ. If we unite ourselves to him in what we suffer, then we too can find hope, and yes even joy, in knowing that we are accomplishing – somehow – the Father’s will.

So friends, in this difficult time, let us not think that God has forsaken us. Instead, let us be aware of how God is sustaining us in what we do, and what we suffer, helping us to unite ourselves anew to his Son, giving meaning to what – apart from him – might feel meaningless. In suffering, we too can feel the closeness of God’s presence; we too can grasp the nearness of heavenly glory.