Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, April 14, 2024. The Gospel of St. Luke 24:35-48. Theme: Wounds and Witnesses
In today’s Gospel we are brought back in time to Jerusalem where a small band of brothers, called the disciples of the Lord, find themselves struggling with doubt, disappointment and confusion. The One with whom they had lived and learned from over the past few years had been suddenly and violently snatched out of their lives. He in whom they had placed all their hopes for a better future had been arrested, tortured, crucified and buried.
But that very morning they began to hear strange stories about him. First, some women in their group who had gone to anoint his body came rushing back with talk about glorious angels at his empty tomb. One of them, Mary Magdalene, even asserted that she had actually seen and spoken with him. And then two other disciples arrived from a journey to Emmaus declaring that they had spent the morning in the company of Jesus, risen and alive. These stories only increased their confusion and toyed with their minds.
Then, suddenly, just as the Emmaus disciples were wrapping up their story, Jesus appeared right in the room! He bestowed a blessing of peace upon them and spoke words of reassurance to their incredulous minds. A growing joy begins to enter their hearts and they reach out to touch their beloved Lord and Master. The once horrible and bloody wounds of his hands, feet and side now seem glorious and radiant. These signs of his torture and death now stand out to them as five trophies of victory, five sources grace and blessing that fill them with confidence and restores their hope!
And it’s no coincidence that this revelation happened simultaneously with the Emmaus travelers saying how they recognized Jesus in “the breaking of the bread", which was the original name for the Eucharist. I think this reminds us that the Risen Jesus in that room and the Risen Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament are one and the same Lord, it is only the mode of his Presence that differentiates them. Before his death he was limited by the physicality of his humanity which confined him to the Holy Land in the first century. But his Resurrection into glory freed him from this limitation, freed him from the restrictions of earthly life and enabled him to become personally present and available to everyone of every time and in every place, of every century and every culture.
Walls cannot stop him now nor can distances curtail his Presence. Even when the Blessed Sacrament is placed in a tabernacle, the Risen Lord is not restrained by its golden doors nor limited by the walls of a parish church. The Power of his Presence bursts forth from wherever the Eucharist is reserved and shines out upon each one of us wherever we might be, as well as upon our neighborhoods and cities. I think this all-pervasive all-encompassing radiating Presence of Christ is what St. Padre Pio meant, when he said one day, “It would be easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the Eucharist.”
An important lesson from this story is that just as the wounds of Jesus were a witness to the reality of his passing through death, so are we meant to be witnesses to the reality that he is now risen and alive. He clearly says this to us in the Gospel and gives us a mission of outreach to others. When we look around our parish church and see so many empty pews we shouldn’t just complain about it but rather ask ourselves if we have been doing what Jesus commanded. In other words, have we been willing to tell others what Jesus has done for humanity in general and what a difference he has made in our own lives in particular? And when we interact with non-believing or non-practicing family or friends, do we look for a natural chance to share faith or, if they are not open to speaking about Christ, have we been doing our best to reflect what Jesus is like by “being Christ” to them?
This personal witness is how the Faith has always been most powerfully spread ever since those first days in Jerusalem. St. Luke is reminding us today that as Christians we are meant to be, as Pope Francis puts it, “missionary disciples”. In the closing verses of his Gospel and in his Book of Acts he will tell us how we become empowered and enabled to carry out this great commission of witnessing to Jesus. We will be reading and hearing more about this as the Liturgies of the Easter Season bring us closer and closer to Pentecost Sunday, the feast of the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
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