The Unseen But Very Present Jesus

 

Deacon Dave · The Unseen But Very Present Jesus

Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, April 19, 2026. The Gospel of St. Luke 24:35-48. Theme: The Unseen But Very Present Jesus 

 The story of the disciples on a 7-mile walk to the village of Emmaus from Jerusalem took place on the first Easter Sunday. The two of them were heartbroken and confused because they didn't understand how the One whom they believed to be the glorious Messiah could have been overcome by his enemies and put to death. It was supposed to be the other way around. At least that’s how everyone imagined it would be once the Messiah arrived. In addition they were utterly bewildered by early morning reports from some women in their group who claimed that this Messiah had risen from the dead. We know that they were having a highly animated exchange because the Greek word in this Gospel that our reading translates as “debating” actually means “bickering and arguing". And that’s not at all surprising in times of confusion and trauma. 

 But Emmaus isn’t just about disciples wandering about in a state of depression and disappointment. The deeper lesson in the story is about how Jesus doesn’t abandon us when we go through tough times of spiritual and emotional suffering. It has something to say to those who have become disillusioned and struggle with questions or even doubts about Christ and Christianity. It assures us that Jesus wishes to accompany us on these painful parts of our faith journey just as He does in the happier times. And it teaches us that in doing so Christ doesn’t force Himself into our lives. Notice how He didn’t push his way into the disciples’ company whether it was about joining them on their walk or spending the night with them once they reached their destination. He gave them the space they needed to make a free personal choice. He waited for them to ask and invite. And the same is true as to how He acts with us today. 

 This reminds me of a popular painting of Jesus that shows Him knocking at the front door of a home. There are actually many versions of it around today. But in all of them, if you look closely, you’ll see that there is no doorknob on the outside. It can only be opened from the inside by the one who lives there. It’s a great visualization about how Jesus respects our freedom. He truly wants to be with us as we go through difficulty and suffering, but He waits for us to open the door and allow Him to step into our lives. And while He awaits our decision, He makes Himself available to us, just as He did for those disciples on the road, so that like them we too can ask questions, express our frustrations, and unburden ourselves. And of course He wants to stay with us just as He did with them, bringing comfort and consolation simply by His Presence. But Jesus allows all of this to happen in our own timeframe and on our own terms, so to speak, so that our response to Him will be genuine and free because freedom is really the only way that true relationships can exist and grow, including our relationship with Him. 

 When the disciples reached the end of their journey they still had no idea as to the true identity of their traveling Companion. But there was something about Him that was so appealing and comforting that they didn't want to part company. The way He had explained the Scriptures to them made the smoldering flame of faith begin to burn once again in their hearts. Through Him they were regaining a sense of hope and their disillusionment was diminishing. And so they asked Him to stay and spend the night. And once they freely extended this invitation Christ most wonderfully responded to their need, enabling them to open wide the doors of their hearts to Him. 

 When they sat down together for their evening meal, the Stranger unexpectedly did what they knew Jesus had done at His last supper with His apostles. He took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. And suddenly… BAM! They recognized the Man. It was Jesus! And they were once again filled with firm faith and spiritual joy! And then just as suddenly…BAM! He disappeared! But notice most importantly that the Gospel does not say that Jesus left them, only that He was no longer visible to their eyes. That's because the Risen Lord was indeed still there, still truly present to them, but now hidden under the appearance of the Eucharistic Bread. 

 And that brings us to an all-important closing highlight of the Emmaus experience. Through the recounting of this story in his edition of the Gospel, St. Luke wants us to realize that though Jesus is risen and ascended to Heaven, He still abides with us. He still remains among us. He makes His Presence known to those who take time to seek Him through prayer and meditation on the Word of God. And He reveals Himself in a mystical way to those who mindfully receive Him with faith in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. And most of all, the Emmaus experience gives us great hope that even when things seem to be going wrong in daily life, Jesus is right there walking beside us even if we don’t see Him with our eyes. We may not recognize His presence but He is there, knocking on the door of our heart, awaiting our permission to enter and remain with us.

Jesus, I Trust in You!

 

Deacon Dave · Jesus, I Trust in You!

Homily for the Octave of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, April 12, 2026. The Gospel of St. John 20:19-31. Theme: Jesus, I Trust in You! 

 Today’s Gospel opens with ten Apostles (minus Thomas who was absent and Judas who had killed himself) huddled together in a securely locked room. They were filled with fear, convinced that they were next on the Jewish authorities' hit-list. They were terrified that what happened to Jesus was going to happen to them. But I’m sure they were also trapped in their own remorse over how they had treated Jesus. That band of brothers needed to be set free, not only physically from that locked room, but also spiritually from their guilty consciences. 

 Suddenly, the Risen Lord appeared in their midst. It was the first time that they saw Him since the gut-wrenching events of His Passion when they had fled and abandoned Him when He needed them most. But just as nothing stopped Jesus from entering into the locked room, so nothing - not even our worst sins - can prevent the Risen Lord from stepping into our lives. He comes to each one of us just as He came to those downcast disciples, speaking words of pardon and peace to them. But what strikes even more deeply about this story isn't what Jesus said to the Apostles but what He didn’t say. He didn’t speak so much as even one word about how they had treated him. No mention and not even the slightest reference to their infidelity, their denial and their abandonment of Him. Instead, He reached out to them with gentleness and affection. Jesus was showing by actions more than by words that He is our Merciful Savior and Brother who doesn’t keep count of our sins, the way we do. He doesn’t allow them to become an obstacle in our relationship with Him. He doesn’t hold our failings against us for He knows well our human weaknesses and woundedness. 

And this tender reaching out by Christ to heal and forgive becomes even more apparent as our Gospel moves fast forward a week to the Sunday after Easter, to what we now call Divine Mercy Sunday. The disciples were again huddled together but this time Thomas was with them. He rejected the news of Resurrection by reminding his companions that their Master suffered a tortuous execution that ripped open His hands, His feet and His heart. Suddenly, the Risen Lord was once more among them and He called Thomas to draw near to Him. He showed Him the marks of the nails and the spear and invited the doubting disciple to examine those sacred wounds. Why? Because they were proof of His great love for us, a love that poured itself out to the very end. They were like trophies from His victorious battle with death and signs that the impossible has indeed become possible. The power of these sacred wounds transformed Thomas into a firm believer. They enabled him to let go of his guilt and accept mercy. These same glorious wounds, still present and radiating power from the Risen Christ, can do the same for us if we allow their reality and what they stand for to sink into our hearts. 

 Today’s Gospel closes with an invitation to trust in Jesus. When Christ said to Thomas, “do not be unbelieving, but believe”, He was basically saying, “stop wavering and put your confidence in Me.” You see, in the Bible the words “believe” and “trust” are interchangeable and so what Jesus was asking of Thomas, and what he is asking of us, is to trust in Him. This invitation to draw close to Jesus and have confidence in Him is at the very heart of the message of Divine Mercy, which is why the inscription, “Jesus, I trust in You”, is printed on every copy of the image. But we know from the experience of our human relationships that trust in a person is only possible if we have a meaningful bond with them. We simply cannot trust someone whom we do not personally know! 

 Jesus was well aware of this human need and so He called Thomas out from among the group to engage in a meaningful one-to-one encounter with Him. He spoke to Thomas’ personal doubts and needs, dispelling the darkness and enlightening his mind. And our Risen Lord does the same for each one of us if we have the spiritual eyes to see it and the ears of soul to hear it. These spiritual experiences of the Lord may not be as dramatic as that of Thomas but they can be just as real and transformational. It all depends upon how we respond to this grace. Perhaps we will have this personal encounter during prayer or after Holy Communion or while serving the Needy Christ in the sick or the poor. He might also choose to surprise us and make himself truly known when we least expect it, such as when we are out for a walk or in the midst of exercising. But in one way or another He will indeed extend this opportunity to those who need it and seek it and ask for it. 

 One way to seek the grace of a personal encounter with Christ is through the image of Divine Mercy that He gave us. This was actually the main reason why Jesus wanted this picture of Himself to be made and distributed. Look at it and see that Jesus is in motion. He is stepping towards you with one foot slightly behind the other and his hand raised in blessing. He comes to uplift and console you, not to punish or condemn! Notice that the marks of crucifixion that He suffered for you are present on His hands as perpetual signs of the depth of His love for you. Let go of any guilt you carry and welcome His healing mercy into your soul. Ponder the beams of light emanating from within Him that symbolize the blood and water poured out for you when His Sacred Heart was pierced on the cross. Let those red and crystal beams remind you that He has chosen to become one with you by Baptism and Eucharist. But most of all look at the inscription, “Jesus, I trust in You” and let it be engraved in your heart, because as Jesus told St. Faustina: “Those words say it all.”

The Mystery of the Empty Tomb & the Missing Body

 

Deacon Dave · Mystery of the Missing Body & Empty Tomb

EASTER SUNDAY HOMILY The Mystery of the Empty Tomb & the Missing Body 

 As we just heard, two thousand years ago in Jerusalem, early in the morning of the first Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalen was making her way to the tomb of Jesus. When she saw that it had been opened and was empty, her first thought was that the Lord’s body had been stolen. And many people today have jumped to the same conclusion when they hear the Easter story. Unable to wrap their minds around the possibility of Resurrection, thievery seems like the most obvious explanation for the Missing Body and the Empty Tomb. But if this was so, then we must ask…who did it and why? According to the documented facts, there are only three possible culprits: the Romans, the Jewish leadership or the Disciples of Jesus. 

 Could it have been the Romans? Highly unlikely since they were the ones who carried out the bloody crucifixion and they had no vested interest in staging a fake resurrection. Then, how about the Jewish leaders? If so, they could have then produced the corpse for all to see and put an end to Christianity with its myth of Resurrection right at its beginning. So, that leaves us with the Disciples. Perhaps they robbed the grave and then spread the fake news of the Resurrection? Hardly so. They were locked away in hiding out of fear for their lives and there’s no way they could have overcome the heavily armed Roman guards at the tomb. Besides, their future destinies showed them to be honest men of integrity who even under gruesome torture did not recant their belief in the Resurrection nor admit to a lie. 

 Once we rule out the possibility of grave robbery, there are only a few possible reasons left to try and explain the mystery of the Missing Body and the Empty Tomb. But none of these stand up to intelligent investigation. However, it’s important that we look into them, because like any evidence presented for consideration, the testimony of the Gospels needs to be examined. So, let’s take a quick look at three other objections besides thievery that skeptics have made to the Good News of the Resurrection. 

 The first one attempts to discredit the authenticity of the Gospels themselves. It holds that the Easter stories are really just fabricated myths or religious fables but not actual historical events witnessed by real people. Well, the majority of historians and archaeologists who have carefully studied the Gospels in the same way that they do all ancient writings, have consistently disagreed with that position. They declare that the Gospels meet all the strict criteria for historical authenticity. And while these scholars can’t tell us what the stories mean from the point of faith, they can and do assure us that they document personal eye-witness evidence that is credible and historically reliable. 

 The second objection asserts that the appearances of the Risen Christ were simply a matter of hallucinations caused by extreme emotional trauma. This could be possible on an individual level but we know that on at least one occasion about 500 people saw the Risen Lord at the same time and in the same place. Psychologists tell us that it’s utterly impossible for everyone in that crowd to have had the same hallucination. Besides, many of those eye-witnesses testified that the One whom they saw and touched was flesh and bone, mysteriously transformed and awesomely glorious, but still the same Jesus of Nazareth whom they had known and loved. 

 The remaining reason given for the Missing Body and the Empty Tomb is that Jesus wasn’t really dead when He was placed in the cave. He was simply unconscious with undetectable signs of life. And then He revived revived and somehow got out of the cave before Sunday morning. This proposal doesn’t consider how a man who had been horribly tortured and crucified the day before could somehow move a 1-ton stone door that usually required at least 2 men with a lever. And it completely glosses over the fact that Jesus was crucified by Roman soldiers who were experts in death by crucifixion and who speared the Lord’s heart to make double-sure that He was dead. 

 So, when all is said and done, we can see that none of these objections have any real merit. And so we are left with the only explanation that is consistent with the hard cold facts and it is the one that the Gospels proclaim: Jesus of Nazareth, once crucified and buried, has truly and bodily risen from the dead, proving that He is indeed the Divine Son of God and the Savior of the world. Furthermore, the Resurrection affirms that everything Jesus taught was not just the wisdom of a holy man but in actuality the Truth of God that sets us free: free from darkness, free from fear and free from the finality of death. And so the question that Easter poses to each one of us is this: Am I willing to believe it or not? 

 And if not, then how come? Am I afraid of what a relationship with Jesus might cost me, of what changes it might bring to my life? Well, many with that same concern ended up being happily surprised to discover that Christ made their lives much better, not worse. Do I hesitate to believe because I know I’m a sinner and think I’m not good enough for Christ? If so, then simply read the Gospels and see just what kind of people Jesus preferred to hang around with. 

 The Risen Lord invites anyone and everyone to come to Him and believe in Him, anytime and anywhere. Even right here and right now. All it takes is your permission to enter and He will begin changing your life from the inside out. He will give you real hope for the future. He will bring you the peace of heart and mind that comes from knowing that even your deepest darkest sins can be forgiven and their guilt removed from your personal history. By abandoning doubt and embracing faith, you will come to discover that the real happiness that you've been seeking, the kind of happiness that you have a right to enjoy, has a name and a face: and it is Jesus of Nazareth, our Living Lord and Savior.

Tonight We Leave Fear and Darkness Behind Us Forever!

 

Deacon Dave · Tonight We Leave Fear and Darkness Behind Us Forever!

Easter Vigil Homily: Tonight We Leave Fear and Darkness Behind Us Forever! 

 Tonight’s Liturgy began in darkness. But then the light of the Paschal Candle, symbol of our Risen Lord, led us into this church. And from that single holy flame of Easter Fire our candles were lit and the Light of the Risen Christ began to increasingly dispel the darkness around us. 

 Now, this wasn’t just an annual Easter ritual. It's a sign, a prophecy, of what Christ the Light does for those who believe in Him, who trust in Him. It brings a bright message of hope into our lives because the truth is, we all experience and often live in darkness. Not just the darkness of outside, but the darkness inside us, the darkness caused by uncertainty and anxiety, by grief and insecurities. But most of all the Bright Light of Easter deals with the deepest darkest universal human fear within each of us which is the fear of death. 

 We don’t like to talk about death. We try to push it aside when the thought arises. We try to distract ourselves from its inevitability by filling up our lives with noise, plans, and busyness. We do all in our power to try to deny it, to avoid it or, at best, to delay it. But every so often, it catches up with us and when it does, it haunts us. Even the strongest of believers has to deal with this fear. 

 The apostles experienced it. By sunset on that first Good Friday, their hope that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah bringing them a whole new life of joy and freedom was crushed. Like their Master, that hope was now dead and gone, buried in a tomb. Frozen by the fear of death, for they figured that they were next on the Jewish authorities' hit-list, they were locked away in hiding and the room in which they were huddled together was like a dark corporate tomb. 

 But then suddenly, as the night began to give way to light on that first Easter Sunday, everything changed. As we just heard, Mary Magdalen and her companion arrived at the tomb of Jesus and discovered that His body was gone! An angel appeared proclaiming that He was risen and then sent the two women off to share this Good News with the others! But Christ intercepted them on their way, manifesting Himself before them in a real and solid bodily form! And what did He say to them? “Do not be afraid!” 

 The very first words from the Risen Christ were not instruction, nor correction, nor even an explanation of what had happened. They were words of reassurance: “Do not be afraid.” He was comforting them with the truth that death no longer has the final word and so fear of it no longer needs to have a place in their hearts. Why? Because He has gone ahead of us through the darkness of death and conquered it finality. It’s now the doorway into a new, glorious and resurrected existence for us who trust in Him and have been baptized into His Body. 

 Think of it this way. If we had to walk through a dark and unfamiliar tunnel alone in the pitch blackness of the night, we would be terribly afraid. But if someone whom we know well walked just ahead of us, and kept calling back, “I’ve made it through—it’s safe—just keep going, follow me,” our fear would begin to lessen. And soon enough it would disappear altogether because we were given reassurance by someone whom we trust that everything was going to be ok. 

 Well, this is precisely what the Lord Jesus has done for us and our fear of death. This is why we celebrate this Holy Night with such great solemnity and jubilation! This is the Night that changes everything for this is the Night when Jesus burst out of the tomb! This is the Night when darkness began to dissipate as the Light of Christ began to radiate throughout the world! This is the Night when the glory of the Risen Lord shines up on us, assuring us that death does not win. That sin does not win. That darkness does not win. 

 Easter proclaims that Christ wins! And as St. Paul told us in our Epistle tonight, we also win because by Baptism we are made one with Him and so His victory is also our victory. This is why we baptize catechumens on this Night and this is why we who are already Christians renew our Baptism on this Night. And so tonight is a time of rejoicing! Tonight, Christ goes before us so that, enlightened by His Resurrection, we can leave the fear and the darkness of death behind us forever!