Easter Sunday Evening Mass

In the aftermath of the vile murder, the gospels tell us, the disciples are bewildered, in shock, angry, ashamed, numb, empty.  Jesus, the one in whom they had hoped, is gone.  Worse still, most of them had turned and run away rather than face the hour of danger.  In the day following Jesus’ burial, some of them are still running; two have even left Jerusalem, en route to a place called Emmaus, a town about seven miles northwest of Jerusalem.  After all, why would they stay?  It’s all over, isn’t it?

We can imagine what these two might have said to each other in the couple of hours the trip to Emmaus would have taken: “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”  Yes, we can easily imagine saying such things, mainly because we have all said them.  And what the two say next is even more familiar and poignant: “We were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”  It is the voice of grief: “We were hoping.”  How many of us have uttered these same words?  Like so many of you, I know from experience that mourning is the loneliest place in the world.

“Finding God in all things” is a phrase often misunderstood.  People will tell me, for example.  “I find God in nature.  I find God in the sunset.”  Well, that is a beautiful thought, and I find God there too.  Just about anybody can find God in a sunset.  It’s not that hard.  You want hard?  Try finding God in an execution, or in cancer, or in terrorism.  Now, that’s hard.  You want to find God in nature?  Try finding God in a tsunami or a crop failure.  That’s hard.

Who can blame these disciples for their doubts?  Doubt, after all, is not the opposite of faith.  Certainty is the opposite of faith.  Faith cannot be separated from doubt any more than Easter Sunday can be separated from Good Friday.  And who could blame us for doubting as these two did?  We live in a world not totally unlike theirs.  The world is still beset by sin and injustice.  How often have we picked up the newspaper, read about another scandal in our church or a bombing in Brussels?  “It’s not supposed to be like this.”   

Finding God in all things is hard, but it’s not impossible.  God is found wherever love is needed the most.  We know why Jesus appears to the two disciples: They need him.  They need his love.  So Jesus ministers to them by healing their wounded hearts.  “Then they said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way?’”

“Rejoice,” the psalmist sings: “This is the day that the Lord has made.”  For the Lord’s promise, the promise he makes to us, is nothing less than the gift of himself, crucified and risen, in word and in sacrament.  Christ Our Hope: always ready to reach inside and restore our broken hearts, to rejoice in our triumphs and bear with us in our hopes – no matter where we are on the road to Emmaus.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor