This and That:
Sundays of Easter – Extending Our Joy!
In our culture, each “holiday” quickly gives way to the next. So on this Third Sunday of Easter, we find our stores urging us to prepare for Mother’s Day and graduations. However, in the liturgical life of the Church, we are still immersed in Easter Joy! During the Sundays of Easter, not “after” Easter, we hear the beautiful Gospel stories of disciples encountering the risen Jesus. Also, each Sunday of Easter, we renew our baptismal promises and we are sprinkled with Baptismal water to remind us of the new life that is ours in Christ. Following is a reflection on this Sunday’s story of the disciples encountering their risen Lord on the way to Emmaus. It is written by Larry Gillick, SJ, a Jesuit from Creighton University:
We pray for the grace of youthful joy. This grace for which we long does not return us to the innocence of our youth, but the sense of our being re-embraced. It is the season of Baptism and we pray with the infants and the adults who are “claimed by Christ” as His own.
Easter lingers in our church assemblies and the readings and prayers keep insisting that we allow the grace of joy to return and flow in and around us. Our memories can also insist that we have walked away and forgotten and forsaken our own baptismal joy. We can pray that we remember as well, at these times, the life, death and resurrection of the most Innocent of all to re-immerse us by His ever-flowing love.
REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL
This Easter season, for the liturgies of Sunday, we do not hear of the two men walking rejectedly away from Jerusalem toward their home town of Emmaus. What we do hear in today’s Gospel is the story they are relating to their companions about how Jesus met them in their broken dreams and in the “breaking of bread.” Their excitement is that of two persons who have just come out of the best movie they had ever seen.
I personally have never failed to grow tired listening to friends as they relate some film they have just seen. It does lose something in the translation. If I enjoy anything it is the experience of two people who have seen the movie together and keep interrupting each other with details which really don’t assist my un-enjoyment. Well, here are these two returning veterans from the battle of faith in Jerusalem these latter days and behold who does the interrupting. I doubt the listeners to the excited fellows were bored with their resurrectional stories. In a sense we are being introduced to a kind of Sunday liturgy.
The congregation has listened to the word which brings Jesus alive. Then Jesus appears in a Eucharistic display. Jesus does admit that He is a challenge to their believing. The Greeks, for whom Luke is writing mainly, do not believe in the resurrection of the body, so Luke has to stress this central mystery. Jesus offers them His body with its wounds and then eats fish to show He is not a ghost. The liturgy ends with a little scriptural review of how the prophets and psalms had indicated His death and Resurrection. The liturgy ends with a Rite of Dismissal, that those who have been witnesses are to announce the call to repentance and the announcement of God’s mercy, beginning from right where they are.
If I ever get in charge of redesigning the Eucharistic liturgy I would begin with the Rite of Sending! I would have a little silent reflection time about such topics as “to whom are you sent?” “To whom are you to extend forgiveness?” “What gifts have you been given to distribute?” I might have everybody write down their reflections and then the presider would bless them and announce loudly “The world is waiting, your families are waiting, and the needy are waiting! Go in peace to continue the Mass as people who are sent beginning right where you are!”
As we renew our Baptismal promises and feel the spray of Baptismal water, may we also feel a resurgence of faith and joy – and share it freely with others!
Blessings,
Sister Mary Therese
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