Third Sunday of Easter

April 26, 2009.

Luke 24: 35-48

The two disciples told the eleven and their companions what had happened on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled."
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.


After last week’s reflection there is a comment written by a friend of mine named Margaret whose long awaited baby son was stillborn. I urge you to go back and read it if you haven’t already because it is very relevant to this week’s reflection and is a beautiful expression of the difficult journey to inner peace.

In both last week’s and this week’s Gospels Jesus greets his disciples with “Peace be with you”, a common greeting in those days but we know now that Jesus did not and does not speak idle words. He knows that we all long for Peace, a deep inner peace that will protect us from the raging storms and give us confidence that we will make it to a safe place. If that inner peace and confidence is missing, we can feel like we are drowning in our anguish and our fears or in loneliness or in spiritual destitution and it’s not long before we are chastising ourselves for a lack of faith or wondering if God is displeased with us or if he really cares about our struggles.

Reading further in the Gospel it says, “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” Remember last week I said that Thomas received the revelation as to who Jesus really is? What we are discovering here is that the faith and understanding that result in inner peace is a gift. We humans are not capable of that kind of faith. It is given to us.

I can hear your minds churning with questions. “Why do some people seem to have so much more faith and inner peace than I have? Did they receive more than I did? Are they more deserving of the gift than I am? It doesn’t seem fair, especially with something so basically necessary to living the Christian life. If I have been given faith why do I often feel so bereft of this gift and so helpless to access it?”

If you have ever really listened to someone like Margaret who has gone through great grief and anguish, or someone suffering with long term physical pain or illness or having immense stress and struggle thrown at them for an extended period, what you will often hear them say is, “I have to take it one day at a time.” Indeed, in times of great suffering and struggle it will be one moment at a time or one second at a time. If the one who is struggling with grief and anxiety is also struggling with her faith what she will eventually discover (whether she can express it this way or not) is that God dwells in the present moment and faith is given for the moment. It is not given for tomorrow or for any time in the future. Faith is a gift for Now. It cannot be stored up or collected. It is like the manna in the wilderness that was given daily and could not be hoarded or stockpiled.

Alcoholics Anonymous has recognized and captured the healing power of this principle of walking in the present moment. For Catholics, it is a beautiful mystery that invites us to enter into God’s indwelling presence in our lives. We must pay more attention to it. It isn’t a principle just for those who are struggling and in pain; it is the key to living in fullness with Christ and it is for everyone who longs for a deeper connection with God in their spiritual walk.

It is not easy to stay in the present moment. It actually seems to be against our broken human nature to do that. We are all given a full portion of faith but we rarely live in the place where our faith is dwelling. Our minds are continually in the past with wounds we have endured and resentments we still carry or else in the future dealing with fearful imaginings or desires for situations and things we think we want and need. Even the followers of Jesus, who had seen Jesus and had received gifts of understanding and deeper perception, still had to grasp that they had to stay with Jesus in the present moment and not allow their fears and imaginings to dictate what the future might hold.

Jesus instructed his followers to wait in Jerusalem for the infilling of the Holy Spirit. They waited for fifty days, fifty long, tense and arduous days of having no idea of what Jesus said they should wait for. Each one of them had been given the gift of faith to believe that Jesus was indeed alive. However, I doubt if that time of waiting was filled with deep inner peace. They had to learn to be in the present, to wait day-by-day, moment-by-moment, second by second for the promise of Jesus to be fulfilled. I also have no doubt as to who was with them teaching them the fine spiritual art of waiting, believing and walking with the Father in the present moment, of seeking grace just for that moment and not looking one second ahead to an uncertain and perhaps terrifying future:

Mary.

Yes, Mary was with them nurturing them in the clarifying truth that God’s power is mighty and that God’s power dwells in the present moment. Whenever they began to run away with visions of a future they couldn’t control or when they started castigating themselves and each other for their past mistakes, I’m sure Mary was there gently calling them back. “Stay here. Don’t go running off like that. He’s not in your past failures and mistakes; he’s not in your limited imaginings of what the future might hold. He’s here. Be here. Speak to him. Be with him”. If her words didn’t reach them, her inner peace did. Mary knew what she was talking about. She had the authority of experience - about 34 years of it.

You all know it is not easy to stay in the present. Just try it for 10 minutes and see what I mean. Note how often you catch your mind playing with either memories of what happened yesterday or last year. Just as quickly your mind jumps to thoughts of things you need to do in the next hour or day or to problems that need to be solved or plans that need to be made, chores that need to be accomplished and of events that you dread. No, it isn’t easy. It’s a spiritual skill and often it’s a skill learned in the furnace of pain and struggle where thinking ahead or remembering the past can cause emotions to spin completely out of control.

Does God send painful circumstances into our lives to “teach us a lesson” about living in the present moment or about trust? I don’t believe that. Life is hard and it is often very painful simply because we live in a broken world with broken bodies and broken relationships and Jesus never said he came to make everything really easy for those who had enough faith. He came, died and rose again in order to be with us (Emmanuel: God with us) on this difficult journey so that instead of becoming more broken we can walk moment to moment with him and find in him the wholeness, life, peace, healing and daily provision we all yearn for.

He is in the present. He is with you. Your faith is full and intact waiting for you to dwell within it so that you can learn to hear, just as Mary learned to hear, just as Margaret learned to hear, the Master’s gentle voice whispering in the midst of the storm,

“Peace be with you.”