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1.Acts
2:14,32-33
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2.1Pet
1:17-21
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Gospel: Luke 24:13-35
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" Meeting Jesus in the
stranger"
Dear brothers and
sisters in our today's readings more especially the gospel we hear that two
depressed disciples leave the company of the apostles and believers in
Jerusalem and head for Emmaus to get away from it all. That same day, late in
the evening , they come right back to rejoin the company of apostles and believers
that had abandoned earlier in the day, full of joy and zeal. We can pose one
question here that what happened to them to give rise to this dramatic
turnaround? They met a stranger on the way- a stranger on the way who did not
quite look like Jesus but who turned out to be Jesus after all.
There is the earliest
saying that most parents used to pass on to their children, " never speak
to strangers!" Yet when you think about this deeply you may realize that
if Cleopas and his companion would have followed this advice, then Jesus would
have passed them by and they would never have had the transforming encounter
with the risen Lord. On our part who knows how many times the risen Lord has
passed you and me by and we did not recognize him or experience his transforming
grace all because of our fear or strangers?
Cleopas and his friend
were trying to distance themselves from the scandalous disaster that befell the
apostles and followers of Jesus with the shameful death of their Master at the
hands of the very Roman Soldiers that they thought he had come to vanquish.
However, as they tried to get away from it, they could not get their minds off
it. They talking that incident all the way long. Could you imagine the sort of
mood they were as they headed for unknown future in Emmaus? It was
disappointment, sadness and deep depression all at once.
The two disciples,
Cleopas and his companion shared with the stranger all the way through. Not
only were they ready to share their confidences with him, but they went all the
way and shared their meal and shelter with him. In sharing a meal with them
Jesus celebrates a Eucharist, which Luke the evangelist calls a " breaking
of bread." For the two disciples are not the apostles. On the other hand
they constitute, as two adult men, sufficient witness according to the Mosaic Law for the word to have religious
value. They are in a position to testify officially that after "breaking
of the bread with them," i.e, after celebrating Eucharist with them Jesus disappeared.
The message from this event is that the ordinary followers of Jesus are to
maintain contact with Him after his resurrection through the Eucharist.
It was in the process
of this sharing that the moment of disclosure occurred and they suddenly
realized that one whom they had accepted all along as helpless stranger was
indeed Jesus, the answer to all their heart's questions. This discovery that
the one in whom they had trusted, Jesus Christ, was indeed alive and not dead,
gave new meaning to their lives, their
faith and their vocation. Banishing all fear and fatigue they got up and went
back that same night to rejoin the company of apostles and followers of Jesus
and share the good news with them that they had met the risen Lord and that
they met him in the person of a stranger.
The resurrection was
for Jesus the dividing line between earthly life when he was limited to the
form of a male, Jewish body and risen life when he is no longer limited in this
way. The risen Lord appears in all types
of bodies: male and female, white and black, young and old, rich and poor, handicapped
and non-handicapped, native and imigrant,Catholic and Protestant, Christian and
Moslem, liberal and conservative and so on and so forth. Though we may see
those who are different from us as strangers, from today's gospel we are
challenged to start seeing them simply as companions on the way. When we reach
out to them in hospitality we reach out to God and attract a blessing to
ourselves.
Dear brethren let us
pray today for the grace to overcome the crippling fear of strangers, for the
courage to reach out with open hearts and open hands to those who are different
from us, knowing that even though the strangers on our way may not look like
Jesus, they may indeed turn out to be Jesus just like the lonely stranger on the way to Emmaus.
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