Religious Jubilarians' Mass: Cathedral of SS Peter & Paul, Providence: Sunday III of Easter 2008 (April 6)

 -- Homily by Abbot Caedmon Holmes, O.S.B. --

The Easter feast and the Easter season are full of reminders of our Baptism, in which we were joined to Christ and began to walk with him on the road of Life, the true Life with a capital L, eternal Life.

When we who are adults---and we who are at least sexagenarians have an advantage here---look back over our Christian lives (as today's celebration almost forces our religious jubilarians to do---but they are not the only ones!), we may well be struck by two things:

-- first, our own failures to live up to our dignity as members of Christ, to achieve complete fidelity, and to do all that we promised we would do;

-- and, second, the great mercy of God, who has not forsaken us or cast us off, but rather picked us up time and time again, carried us through to this day, and even enabled us to see in our lives some fruitfulness, and, in spite of our many falls, up to now, even, on the whole, some actual faithfulness. Indeed our faithfulness to Him, such as it is, rests on and comes from His unwavering faithfulness to us. And this thought fills us with hope, that is, with confidence, that he will not abandon us to the netherworld, nor suffer us to undergo corruption, but will show us the path to life.

[By the way---not totally unrelated to these reflections--- a statistic recently published, which I think deserves to be widely known: in the last thirty years, 11,000 Catholic priests who had given up their priestly ministry repented and went back to the exercise of the ministry. Eleven thousand! We often hear statistics of how many priests (and religious) have left; but to the honor of the divine mercy, we need to hear, and ponder on, this one, also.]

The two disciples in today's Gospel had left the company of the apostles at Jerusalem on what was (unbeknownst to them) the very day of Christ's resurrection, and were going, in sorrow and disappointment, back to their old way of living (before they had been called and decided to give up all and follow him).  On what we could see as their journey away from their vocation---from their Christian call---it is He who approaches them, and walks with them!

In answer to his questioning, they tell him of their dashed hopes and their perplexity.  He retorts on their folly and slowness of heart to believe all that they should have been able to hear in the prophets: namely, that Christ's entry into his glory had to be by way of being rejected and made to suffer shame and torture and death. He explains to them, he 'opens' for them, the Scriptures.  On the road with him they experienced, as it were, a Liturgy of the Word, such as we are having right now.

They were so taken with his teaching that when they got to their destination, they pressed him to stay with them.  They all three sat down for a meal, where he took the bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and handed it to them: something like a Liturgy of the Eucharist, such as we are about to share here in a few minutes.  Their eyes are opened: they recognize him in the breaking of the bread. And he disappears from their physical sight.

They communicate to one another how they had felt as he opened to them the Scriptures: how their hearts were burning within them. In fact, they have been so set on fire by what they have heard and what they have eaten that they head out at once, to bring the good news back to Jerusalem, although night will already have fallen, and they were living in a time long before paved roads and street lights: the Passover moonlight will be their only external illumination on their seven-mile night journey back. Their encounter with Christ cannot be kept to themselves, they must go out on mission and share it. Just as we all will go forth from this Eucharist today, commissioned by the one we have heard and whose risen body and blood we have received, to bring the good news to those we meet.

Christ has been revealed in the final time for us, St Peter says in the second reading, so that we might believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, with the result that our faith and our hope are in God---hope that the great joy He gives us here on earth He will bring to perfection in heaven.

"The Lord is my allotted portion and my cup", we say in today's psalm;
"It is you, o Lord, who hold fast my lot.
I set the LORD ever before me;
With him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
You will show me the path to life,
abounding joy in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever."

We rejoice at God's goodness shown to us in our own Christian lives and in the religious lives of today's jubilarians.  We congratulate them. We thank God for his goodness shown to them and in them. And we say: "To God, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit, be all the praise."  Amen.

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