LONDON - 7 April 2008 - 430 words
Text: Fr Brendan Callaghan SJ at Church of the Assumption
Fr.Brendan Callaghan SJ gave the following homily yesterday at the Mass for LGBT Catholics, parents and families at the Church of the Assumption, Warwick Street, London W1
"We had hoped" they say, these
two on their way to Emmaus and maybe those words capture
something that touches each of us. We had hoped
each of us - for so much, and now maybe it all seems to
be in the past. We had, at some point, a glimpse
of glory an insight into what we might be, what we could
achieve, what might be given us and now?
Today's Gospel is the longest and the most detailed of the accounts
of the meetings between the risen Jesus and those who had been
his followers, those who had been with him right up to what they
saw as the end "we had hoped" they say. But it
is still a short story, and somehow Luke manages to compress into
this small space an amazing richness.
People who don't know the Scriptures of the New Testament often
presume that they are full of people who are impossibly good,
living lives that are impossibly full of faith. What are we given
today?
Two people who had given up,
two people who had left the community of which they had been
part,
two people who were heading home, getting out of Jerusalem while
they still could,
two people who were confused,
two people whose whole futures were now unclear,
two people who had become, in a moment, for a time, to some degree,
unbelievers.
Two people who, in a way, might be seen as the first "lapsed
Catholics."
(And at this point I can speak for myself only).two people who
might seem to have some characteristics we recognise in ourselves.
But, at the same time, two people whose hearts were 'still in
the right place' as our odd English idiom has it two
people who in the midst of their confusion and disappointment
and lost hopes and unbelief still had longings and beliefs that
they could not relinquish, a love that they could not deny without
denying who they were. "We had hoped", they say, and
in those words they say something about themselves as they are
now as they speak and not just about how they had
been in the past. They had met Jesus, and their hearts had been
touched, their lives had been changed, and they could not forget
that. "We had hoped"
Really to meet Jesus was and is to know that the deepest longings
of our hearts are not illusory. Really to meet Jesus was and is
to be touched at a level that makes it clear that the yearning
to love and to be loved, the yearning for belonging within a community
of care, concern and happiness, the yearning to find within ourselves
both a real and lived compassion for everyone and a real and lived
recognition of our own intrinsic goodness all these are
not romanticism running out of control but echoes of the glory
that is true human living truly human living.
So the "Emmaus Two" had been transformed. And yet they
had walked out on the community of the followers of Jesus
they were most likely heading for "deep cover", out
reach of the Temple police or the spies of the Sanhedrin. We might
just find ourselves asking how this was possible how they
could do such a thing after such a transformation? But we need
to realise that what they had in their lives was nothing different
to what we have in our lives, what they did in their lives was
nothing different to what we do in our lives. Because when we
recognise that at least in some ways the Emmaus two are just like
us, then today's gospel of an event, a meeting that took place
two thousand years ago can speak most powerfully to us of an event,
a meeting that takes place now, here, today.
How does Jesus respond to these two?
He doesn't write them off he comes to join them;
He doesn't tell them to turn round immediately and go back to
Jerusalem he walks the way they are walking;
He doesn't tell them off he challenges them and helps them
understand what they already knew but hadn't allowed themselves
to believe;
He doesn't exclude them, but shows them, in the breaking of the
bread, that they are with him and he is with them.
As it was for the first disciples of Jesus, so it is for us:
Jesus comes to meet us even when we think we are keeping our
distance or even heading away from him;
Jesus walks with us as we slowly find our true way;
Jesus opens our hearts and minds to recognise more deeply what
we already knew but hardly dared believe;
In the breaking of the bread Jesus shows us that we are with
him and he is with us.
Let's pray that we can find the time and the space to allow ourselves
to recognise that all this is true: to dare to believe that Jesus
looks into our hearts, deeper than we dare look ourselves, and
finds there a longing for the life of God's kingdom, not just
as something in the future but as a way we can live here and now.
"We had hoped" that's true of the Emmaus disciples
and it's true of us. In Jesus God sees our hope, and loves us.
As we share in the breaking of the bread, let us ask the Risen
Jesus for the gift of feeling our own hearts burn within us as
we recognise him not just in the sacrament of the altar, but in
the sacram
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