6th Sunday of Easter Year A 2023

 

                                     6^th. Sunday of Easter (A) 

(Acts of the Apostles 8:5-8, 14-17; 1^st Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21)

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, notice that in today’s Gospel, Philip worked miracles as he proclaimed Christ in pagan Samaria– which means that the Lord backed up Philip’s proclamation by signs to attract men’s attention – but the Apostles, Peter and John, having come down from Jerusalem, still needed to:

Pray for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them, they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

Philip was one of the seven men of repute in last week’s readings specially designated, by popular choice and the Apostles’ blessing, to serve at table and take special care of the widows; he was not one of the Apostles breathed upon by the Risen Lord that they might personally receive and be able to personally bestow God’s Gift of the Spirit.

How clearly that shows what is truly, supremely, Christian: not miracles -- great blessings though they be -- but the gift of the SPIRIT OF JESUS!!

That is why – in Mother Church’s wisdom – our second reading today began:

            Beloved, sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts!

That is, use the Spirit with which you have been gifted to glorify Christ as the Holy One, our Redeemer and Saviour; but in all and above all, as our LORD and GOD!  Moreover, sanctify Him in your heart, that is, in all sincerity and with full hope, trust, and longing:

‘Oh, Lord Jesus, rule me.  In all the desires and aspirations of my mind and heart, come Lord Jesus, RULE IN ME!’

The Holy Spirit gifted us, is ours at the Personal request of Jesus, as we heard in the Gospel reading:

If you love Me, if you keep My commandments, I will ask the Father and He will give you another Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, to be with you always.

He is indeed a most special Gift, and a truly sublime pledge of love -- given us by the Father at Jesus’ request!

The world, however,

Cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.

 But you, oh so privileged Catholic and Christian People of God,

            You know Him, because He remains with you and will be in you!

Originally, Eve listened to Satan and sinned.  Adam listened to Eve and sinned.  Both sinned by disobeying God’s direct command, which was, that they must not to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree.

Now, Eve was led to sin by listening to Satan who used her concupiscence to stir up her pride.  Adam was led to sin by listening to Eve and there, Satan used Adam’s concupiscence to emphasize his weak-willed desire for an untroubled life.   Both sinned by disobedience because they had no true love for God; and because Adam and Eve both sinned as one against God, death – together with his minion -- suffering, entered human life

Now, when -- as we heard in our Gospel today -- the people of Samaria heard Philip proclaiming the Good News about Jesus, and when they saw him curing people who were suffering and driving out Satanic spirits in Jesus’ name, they were filled with joy and embraced the Good News and God’s saving grace.

What does God do today, to help us embrace the Faith proclaimed by Mother Church and love Him?

It can’t be miracles on demand.  Indeed not!  For over many past centuries and even in recent times we have been given glorious, and manifest, miracles and signs of God's great love.  But, in these our own days, the help we Catholics still have in Mother Church and can still embrace in our own hearts, has been told us anew today:

You know Him (the Holy Spirit of Jesus), because He remains with you (in Mother Church) and will be in you (if you want, through obedience)!

Therefore, dear People of God, I once again repeat St. Peter’s exhortation:

            Beloved, sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts!

We know Jesus as the Christ of God, because the Holy Spirit remains, forever, with Mother Church; and will be in each of us, personally, by the Eucharistic Gift of Mother Church, provided that we continue faithful-and-true to Him Who first called us, to Him Who died and rose from the dead for us, and to the Spirit gifted us!

Peter, in today’s second reading, was so confident -- urging us to sanctify Christ in our hearts -- that he was in no way embarrassed to declare that our sufferings as Christians for what is good, are themselves a truly authentic ‘sanctifying’ of Christ, since:

Christ also suffered for sins once, the Righteous for the unrighteous, that He might lead you to God … brought to life, by the Spirit. 

But the greatest question and test for our world today is: ‘What is SIN?’   What is the sin for which Jesus’ first public words demanded that we repent??

It is the sin condemned by the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament given by God to His Chosen People through Moses; the Ten Commandments which were affirmed and exemplified by Jesus in His life and teaching, death and resurrection.

That teaching of Jesus is confirmed and appropriated for us today by His Most Holy Spirit ever at work inspiring, guiding, and protecting Mother Church in her Gospel mission; and mankind’s slavery-to-sin is the reason why Jesus came among us offering salvation. For, apart from Jesus’ saving grace, sin cannot be overcome by the political correctness and social maneuverings of our modern Western world, which is, in fact, now being re-paganized to an unprecedented degree and depth in these our times!

The ‘world’ cannot receive the Spirit of Jesus because it does not recognize the reality of that sin which rules -- even by acclaim in its pleasurable aspects! -- in human lives and society today (Matthew 7:11):

If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children… 

The ‘world’ only wants to establish its own laws of right order and criminality in order to achieve its own desired way of life in society, to win human approbation, and to provide comforting self-justification.  And in all that, it wants to be Free from God, and will not recognize-and-reject the real sin present in human hearts!!

Shortly before His Crucifixion and subsequent Resurrection Jesus said to His Apostles:

In a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me, because I live and you will live.  On that day, you will realize that I am in My Father and you are in Me and I in you.   (John 14:19–2)

People of God, looking at the world around us, at the ever more modern versions of what used to be Christian society, we can surely say that that day, foretold by our Blessed Lord, has in some measure arrived, and that we would do well, therefore, to give more special heed than we have perhaps done before to His recommendations:

Whoever has My commandments and observes them is the one who loves Me.  And whoever loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.

Let us, dear friends in Christ, calmly set sail, as it were, under such an aegis, allowing ourselves to be guided by the breathing of God’s most Holy Spirit filling the sails of our transformed worldly expectations and our freshly inspired heavenly aspirations; and, looking to neither right nor left, trust totally in Him our Brother Who died and rose again for us; and in Him, the Father, Who originally called us to His Son and still invites us by His Spirit to find eternal joy and peace in our true home with Himself the one, most loving Father of us all. 

 

 

5th Sunday of Eastertide Year A 2023

 

5^th Sunday of Eastertide, Year (A)

(Acts 6:1-7; 1^st. Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12)

 

 

People of God, let me draw your attention to the first reading, in the course of which you heard of the Apostles speaking to the early Christians in Jerusalem:

The Twelve called together the community of the disciples and said, "It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table.   Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

You will, I trust, appreciate from that passage the importance the Apostles attached to their 'ministry of the word', which included what we would call today the duty of preaching.  In this they were being totally faithful to the Lord's command, for we are told (Mark 16:14-16) that, after His Resurrection:

Jesus appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He said to them, "Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature.  He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." 

‘Preach’, means ‘proclaim’, with a difference.  ‘Proclaim’ refers to any piece of information destined for public awareness: Augustus was proclaimed throughout the Roman world. ‘Preach’ refers to the Gospel of Jesus destined for personal appreciation.   Proclamation requires an official herald; preaching needs a priest of the Church or official disciple of Mother Church.  Proclamation requires some dignity, accurate information, a strong voice, and clear pronunciation; preaching requires personal commitment to Jesus and Mother Church, approved teaching (Church doctrine), and spiritual appreciation only gained/learnt through humble initiation and authentic guidance.

With that in mind perhaps someone might think: ‘But what about the Mass?’ 

The Apostles regarded the celebration of the Eucharistic to be of supreme importance, indeed absolutely necessary, for the Church, as St. Paul writes in his letter to his Christian community at Corinth (1 Corinthians 11:23-24):

I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is (broken) for you; do this in remembrance of Me."

For the Apostles, therefore, there could be no conflict of precedence between ministry of the Word and celebration of the Eucharist, since they are two co-related aspects of their proclamation  of Jesus as Lord and Saviour: as St. Peter said in our first reading:

We shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

The Eucharist is supreme prayer: the prayer of the Church -- the Body of Christ -- with that of her Head, Christ Himself.  Preaching the Gospel is the commission given by Jesus to His faithful Apostles, for the fulfilment of which He endowed them with the gift of His own most Holy Spirit, that by their preaching they might spread His Good News far and wide and thus continue His work of redemption for men and women of all times.

Consequently, a priest’s calling, as a sharer in the Bishops' Apostolic mission in Mother Church today, is to follow the Apostles' example by his own ministry of the Word and offering of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, both of which he does pre-eminently in his celebration of the Eucharist and proclamation of Christ at Holy Mass on Sunday.

Here, People of God, we should notice that the ministry of the Word is not, primarily, a matter of being able to talk well, for true preaching is the result of the Holy Spirit working in and through disciples – specially adapted as His instruments by their priestly training and ordination -- obediently opening themselves up to His grace and making themselves useful for His purposes. And the supreme purpose for such Spirit-guided preaching is not to try to make Jesus humanly popular but to proclaim His divine Person and saving Truth,   in order that God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit --  might be worshipped, loved, and served aright in the House of God which is Mother Church wherever she is assembled in His Name for Sunday worship.

'Preach' is a much-abused word; being given connotations that are generally critical,  including hypocritical, wearisome, un-necessary, self-aggrandizement. And yet, preaching  is essentially the full proclamation of Gospel truth, and it necessarily involves explanation, exhortation, and spiritual appreciation.

Obviously, the greatest dangers for the preacher are spiritual pride, self-seeking, gospel ignorance,  and lack of confidence in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and consequently, a desire to please people (making Jesus humanly popular!).

Mother Church alone has been given the fullness of the Spirit and no individual member of the Church has such fullness: all her children receive the Spirit entrusted to them, through her, for a particular purpose and function.  We were shown this clearly in the first reading where Peter, speaking on behalf of all the Apostles, said:

Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task.

Why did the Apostles need to lay their hands on these chosen men?  Their fullness of the Spirit and of wisdom at that time was such as to have enabled them to live as disciples of Jesus meriting a good reputation in their general service of the Christian community.  However, in order to fulfil in the name of the infant Church the special function of looking after those who were most needy -- the widows -- they had to be given the Spirit anew:

            They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid hands on them.

No special God-willed work, in-and-for-the-Church, can be done without a special gift of the Spirit for that purpose.  The Spirit guides, preserves, strengthens and inspires for the good of the Church, and He will never allow the gates of Hell to prevail against the Church. And so, He does most especially protect the whole People of God by blessing and prospering the sincere efforts of individuals called to serve either in the ordained ministry, or as living members of what St. Peter recognized as:

A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of His own, so that you may announce the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.

That is why Jesus said to His Apostles (John 16:13-14) and says also to His Church today:

When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.

Many of the present difficulties and trials of Mother Church stem, most certainly, from an ignorance of the working of the Holy Spirit, and an overdose of human pride.  The Holy Spirit is always and only given to build up Mother Church for the glory of God, never to back up human pride or indulge human passions.

Unfortunately, there are some  Catholics who think that their learning or intelligence enables them, while others imagine that the vehemence of their personal feelings compels them, or even that their own social or ecclesiastical standing allows them, to intrude themselves into even the most sacred matters of Church’s teaching and practice, as is happening in the over-rich German Church today. These wrong attitudes have bedevilled Mother Church from the beginning, as St. John shows when speaking in the book of Revelation (3:1-3) to those with a false opinion of themselves or a false reputation with others:

I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive—but you are dead.   Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.   

People of God, St. Peter tells us that Jesus,

            The stone which the builders rejected, has become the chief cornerstone;

and that we, His disciples:

As living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  

That spiritual house is Mother Church where the Holy Spirit dwells and is ever at work to form each and every one of us in the likeness of Jesus as a holy priesthood.

However, our own individual and personal spiritual sacrifices can only be acceptable to God: first of all, because of the real sacrifice of Jesus Himself which alone gives worthy praise and glory to the God the Father; and secondly, because some members of the Church have been called and ordained to become instruments of the Spirit of Jesus, in the continued offering, even today, of Jesus’ one, real, and perennial self-sacrifice-of-love to the Father.   Because of that eternally-abiding and ever-contemporary offering of Jesus' sacrifice, all our individual spiritual sacrifices can become acceptable to the God and Father Who is All in all; and here, the sacrifices Christian parents make to advance their children as sincere Christians and truly human beings, are of the utmost importance.

People of God, our hope and our future is bound up with Jesus and in Him we have a sublime vocation.  Each and every one of us should try to build up our relationship with Him more and more: for though we have a calling, we still have to work at it, and we cannot fulfil our calling without ever-greater grace and strength of the Holy Spirit.  God is All in all for us, and He wants us to give Him our all, in return.  In Mother Church we are called and are enabled to do just that, by the abiding presence of Jesus in the Church, and the constant working of His Holy Spirit in the Church and in our lives.

Let us therefore go out into the world after today’s Eucharist inspired to proclaim our Blessed Lord Jesus, Whose Truth is the only Way, and by Whose Holy Spirit of Life alone can we give fitting praise and honour to the Father of sublime Mystery and Majesty,  Whose eternal Presence, Glory, and Power, in Mother Church and in our individual and most personal lives, can only be understood as LOVE: heavenly, sacrificial, and eternal.  Amen.

                                                 

4th Sunday of Eastertide Year A 2023

 

4^th. Sunday Eastertide (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 2:14, 36-41; 1^st. Peter 2:20-25; John 10:1-10)

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Dear People of God, on this Sunday of the Good Shepherd there is something of particular interest for us in today’s reading taken from the first letter of St. Peter, because Peter, you will remember, was specially commissioned by Jesus – because of his unique love for Jesus – to ‘feed His lambs and His sheep’.  In other words, Peter was chosen and Personally urged and encouraged to be himself a good shepherd for Jesus’ flock in the likeness of Jesus Himself.

Those Christians to whom Peter was writing were only recent converts and he was seeking to encourage, strengthen, and guide them in the ways of Christ; and I want to draw your attention to the way he sets about it.

 You had gone astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.

 Thus Peter congratulated those converts, and rejoiced over the salutary change in their lives.  However, Peter did that in order to confirm them in what he evidently considered to be of primary importance for new-born Christians and Catholics to learn, namely, that ordinary ideas of morality were not good enough for them:

           What credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated,  you endure it                 with patience?

 You new Christians, who are still rejoicing in the wonder of your conversion, must, Peter said, realise that though you are now suffering for your faith, Christ Himself also suffered, moreover, He suffered for us, which tells us that our suffering is not just to be passively endured, we must try to embrace it with patience and for a good purpose, as He did:

             Leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.  To this you were                  called.

Peter then ended his proclamation of the saving Gospel of Jesus, by adding:

 But if, when you do what is right and suffer, you take it patiently, this is  commendable before God;

thereby commending the manner in which he, Peter himself and his fellow Apostles, had themselves suffered for Jesus:

 They left the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonour for the sake of the Name.  (Acts 5:41)

Such was the way the early Church was built up: Christians were taught to live for righteousness and encouraged to face up the difficulties of their personal situation with their eyes firmly fixed on the historic Person of Christ who suffered and died to redeem us from the sin which is in the world and of the world.  In such teaching Peter was being absolutely faithful to Jesus Who had said to His disciples (John15:19):

         If you were of the world, the world would love its own.  Yet, because you are not          of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Isn’t it strange then, that in response to today’s world-wide persecution of Catholic and Christians, we hear few Church messages of whole-hearted Christian support, encouragement, and guidance.  Far too often we hear mere appeals for peace to people who have no interest in such appeals expressing human sympathy for the suffering, as if such anonymous human sympathy was the best that could be offered, indifferently, to all, whether they be pagans, religious, Muslims, Jews, free-thinking Christians, or Catholic and Orthodox Christians.

The nascent Church, however, knowing perfectly her role and function, proclaimed and bore witness to the Gospel of Jesus while fully acknowledging that only God Himself spoke in the secret depths of the hearts of those who listened, and that those He thus chose, He then gave to Jesus (John 6:44):

            No one can come to Me unless he Father Who sent Me draw him. 

 In today’s first two readings Peter is so very confident in offering the Jesus he proclaims as the sublime Example and supreme Reward for all those seeking God and salvation:

     Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the             forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit.   For the     promise is made to you and to your children, and to all those far off, whomever         our God will call.

And we were also given an example of Peter endevouring to be the  ‘good shepherd’ Jesus wanted and expected him to become, by showing us that Peter had no qualms or hesitation whatsoever in offering Catholics under persecution not mere sympathy but Gospel encouragement and help by exhorting them to face up to their trials with patience, confidence, and courage: 

Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His footsteps.

Too often today public statements by prominent servants of Mother Church seem to be over-much politicised, serving primarily to cause no trouble rather than to preach and proclaim Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and to offer the encouragement of Christian and Catholic teaching for suffering disciples of Jesus in need of that spiritual backbone and moral strength which can only be bestowed by a sure, ‘Holy Spirit based’ hope for now, and Jesus’ Personal promise of eternal fulfilment to come.

After rising from the dead in glory Jesus did not live again here on earth.  He did, indeed, show Himself to His intimate disciples several times, but on all those occasions He appeared as One Who had ascended, that is, as One already living at the righthand of the Father in heaven.  He had risen in order to ascend, because the life in which He rose, the life He offers to share with us, was, is, heavenly life, eternal and glorious.  Those who imagine they can live as good Christians and Catholics while aiming no higher than earthly happiness and earthly fulfilment are, at the best, like those fireworks we call ‘damp squibs’: made to be rockets, they do indeed burn when their match is applied, but they find it hard to lift off, and if they should begin to rise they go up only for a few fretful yards before spluttering and flopping down to ground again, with no further possibility  of fulfilling  their promise.

Those whom Peter addressed his message, on the other hand, were true disciples of Jesus, under no illusions that the world which had crucified their Lord might in some way come to love them:

If you were of the world, the world would love its own.  Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore, the world hates you.

However, they did know, and whole-heartedly accepted, that thanks to Jesus’ Death and Resurrection, they were no longer helpless under the power of sin.  They rejoiced In the conviction that they could now overcome the world’s deceit, in and with Jesus Who conquered sin and death by rising in the glory of the Holy Spirit, and Who now offers to all who will believe in Him and in His saving proclamation of the heavenly Father’s love, a share in the presence and power of His Most Holy Spirit (John 16:33):

     These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace.  In the world         you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

Peter was very realistic in his address to the new converts of Asia Minor, and he not only warned them of the difficulties they would have to face, but even said it was their vocation, their calling, not only to suffer in such a way but also to triumph over their trials in the strength of Christ:

     What credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently?          But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable             before God.  For to this you were called, because Chris when He was reviled, did      not revile on return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed                 Himself to Him Who judges righteously.

Speaking in this way Peter was preparing and strengthening them for whatever might arise; and we ourselves – aspiring to be sincere believers in and true disciples of Jesus – also find his words, after nearly two thousand years, still refreshingly pertinent and inspiring, oppressed as we are by the sin that is not only blatantly rampant in the world around us, but also visible in our own society, and even to be found skulking in our very own selves.  

Saint Peter makes very clear to us why we have felt the need to come here today, to meet Jesus where He promised to be with us, that is, in His Church, our Mother.  We have come wanting to be healed by Jesus, to learn from Him, and to be empowered by His Spirit, that we might, by overcoming the sin-of-the-world in ourselves, bear authentic witness to Him and to the wondrous love of the Father Who sent Him among us to save us.

 We know, however, that our healing will be a lifelong process, for the Holy Spirit of Jesus must open up our most secret selves so that, penetrating to the core of our being, He might form us in all truth and sincerity into a likeness of Jesus.  God needs to temper His power to our frailty with the result that the Holy Spirit working in us can only change us gradually.  Moreover, the Spirit, having begun to work His wonders in us, has then to encourage us personally to commit ourselves to following His influence and guidance with confidence, trust, and courage; and that too is difficult and takes time, because we instinctively want to walk with others, to be comforted and appreciated by our fellows; and too often we find ourselves unable to hear or understand when the Spirit of Jesus would lead us along a way that is not level, well sign-posted or well-trodden, by others.

Today, therefore, dear People of God, let our Easter rejoicing be both whole-hearted and truly profitable for ourselves and for Mother Church; let us make it our delight to proclaim Jesus as our Saviour and our Risen Lord, our whole confidence and sure hope; and as we do that, let us renew our admiration of and prayers for all those saints in Mother Church suffering for their faithfulness to Jesus and His Church.  With them, let us bolster up our hearts as we listen carefully and trustfully to Jesus’ words:

Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.  All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.  I am the door.  I anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.

Jesus is indeed the Way, the firstborn from the dead; He is the Truth which alone can satisfy and fulfil our deepest longings; He is life itself, in the fulness of all its possibilities and divinely eternal.  Through faith in Jesus we have entered into the flock of God, and Jesus like a good shepherd leads His flock to nourishing pastures.  Having conquered the sin of the world, and having been raised – still in our likeness – to new and eternal life in the Spirit of Glory, Jesus is able to fulfil what He promised (John 10:29-30):

     I give them eternal life, they shall never perish neither shall anyone snatch them         out of My hand.  My Father, Who has given them to Me is greater than all; and         no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.  I and My Father are one.

Eastertide is a time of supreme joy for all Christians, so let us learn from Peter who, inspired by the Spirit of Jesus, spoke words of truth that pierce the fog of worldly deceits around us, and our own self-indulgent fancies:

             Be saved from this perverse generation!

                             

 

 

 

 

3rd Sunday of Easter Year A 2023

 

 3^rd. Sunday of Easter (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 2:14, 22-23; 1^st. Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35)

 

As the two disciples walked towards Emmaus they were talking about Jesus, the events of His life, and His crucifixion and  death they had so recently experienced in Jerusalem.

Reminiscences, however, dear People of God, no matter how loving, are not faith:

The Father himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have come to believe that I came from God.   (John 16:27)

What saved those two former followers (‘we had hoped’) of Jesus from becoming ‘no-hopers’?   What indeed inspired them to throw away their baggage of regrets, shake off their sorrow, and become renewed and true believers in Jesus? 

It was not directly due to Jesus having explained to them the Scriptures about Himself.  For, though having gladly heard Him as a companion-on-the-way, they were, nevertheless, initially prepared to see Him part from their company a little later on.

No.  It was not Jesus’ enlightening of their minds that changed their dispositions, but the fact that, on seeing Him begin to go off on His own way, they suddenly remembered how their hearts had been so deeply touched:

            Did not our hearts burn within us?

It was not the event itself – Jesus’ explaining the Scriptures -- but their recalling, and for the first time appreciating, its effect on them, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

These words of Jesus to His Apostles can give us some guidance here:

It is to your advantage that I go away, because if I do not go away the Helper will not come to you. (John 16:7)

Dear People of God, Jesus -- though a visible ‘companion’ to those He had joined on their way to Emmaus -- was not of this world.  He was, in fact, glorified by the Spirit.   It was surely the Helper for Whom Jesus had prayed on behalf of His Apostles and His nascent Church, Who was already at work within those erstwhile companions of His on the way, bringing to their minds the spiritual significance of what happened to them so recently:

            Did not our hearts burn within us?

Dear People of God, facts of all sorts impinge upon -- entering and leaving -- the active awareness of our minds.  Some thoughts, some facts, penetrate deeper -- like darts -- when they catch our attention and cause our minds to recognize something of their importance.

There are, however, spiritual arrows that penetrate deepest of all when we find ourselves hit by what may seem to have been but a mere glimpse of their beauty; but notwithstanding, a glimpse revealing a beauty that solicits almost painfully -- nay even demands -- some response, some acknowledgement of our appreciation,  some embrace emanating from our deepest self.

They urged Him, ‘Stay with us,  it is nearly evening and the day is almost over’.

This Man had found them ‘looking sad’ and now, as He was on the point of leaving them, they realised that something wonderful had happened to them in His company, and they knew they had to acknowledge it immediately, they must not forget it.  It was almost as if they themselves were being tested: they must not fail, could not lose the opportunity that this Man had offered them:

Stay with us,  it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.

We know that God speaks to, draws, all who are seeking Him. Indeed, Jesus, answering some Jews questioning Him and His teaching, once said that anyone sincerely seeking God would know – that is, by God’s grace and gift – that His, Jesus’, doctrine was, indeed, authentic divine teaching.

Whoever chooses to do His will shall know whether My teaching is from God or whether I speak on My own.  (John 7:17)

Dear People of God, our God is not unknown to us; He is not un-knowable for  whoever sincerely wants and seeks to know something of His truth.  But such seekers must also be humble enough to be prepared to both wait and pray that they might notice when He contacts them in His own way,  for we cannot test Him.

Notice, that Jesus kindled the faith of the walkers to Emmaus through an appropriate understanding of the Scriptures, and that is what God is trying to do with and for every one who, like us, is hearing Mother Church’s chosen readings and perhaps a homily during the sacrifice of Holy Mass.  Jesus is offering them, giving us, an opportunity, whether you have heard those readings until you are ‘sick’ of hearing them,  whether you think the priest’s words are convincing, his person acceptable enough, or not …. Despite all that may be going on in your heart and mind Jesus is at your side, at this time, offering an opportunity, and ready to welcome and further any positive response!!

However, it was in the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist itself that the disciples actually recognized, found, Jesus their Lord and Saviour.  And we, dear People of God, must approach the sacrament – our Eucharist today – with faith and love most of all.  But also with a most necessary measure of humility and openness-of-spirit if we wish to recognize Christ truly and embrace Him sincerely: a humility and openness-of-spirit ready to be manifested in our gratitude and our obedience to God’s comfort or guidance, to His commands and strength, should He deign to visit us.

There are other considerations that could be taken up from our readings today.  For example, turn over in your minds the fact that Jesus accompanies us – as He did those two going to Emmaus – only if we walk our way-of-life in communion with Him, sharing  a few moments with Him perhaps only occasionally,  but never unwillingly, if and when we find ourselves free to do so.  Dear friends in Christ, one of the greatest, most profitable, habits we can possibly learn, is to learn from and imitate the blind beggar Bartimaeus (Mark 10: 46-48) who heard that Jesus was passing by and simply put himself in Jesus’ way by crying out:

            Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!

No one will ever hear your cry, for you will be crying out for Jesus’ hearing only; but it will sooner rather than later win you a blessing far greater than that which so greatly rejoiced Bartimaeus … the Spirit, the Gift, of Jesus awakening and warming your hearts and deepening your companionship with Jesus on the way to your heavenly home.