Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

Wednesday of Easter Week

April 20, 2022

Acts 3:1-10, Ps 105, Lk 24:13-35

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.20.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In these readings of Easter Week, the Church helps us to ponder the dramatic transformation that Jesus’ Resurrection is supposed to have in our life. We have seen over the course of the last two days the stunning metamorphosis in Mary Magdalene and the 3,000 people listening to St. Peter on Pentecost Sunday. Today we see the total changes wrought in the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate and the astonishment and amazement of all those who were accustomed to seeing him at the gate. We also see the transformation in the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

* It’s important for us to resist the temptation for Easter to become routine, that the biggest change in us resulting from the liturgical remembrance of Jesus’ resurrection be that now we can consume the food and beverages we gave up for Lent. The celebration of Easter is supposed to lead us to the newness of life St. Paul described at the Easter vigil, helping us to be dead to sin and alive for God in Christ Jesus. The power of Easter is meant to bring about in us the long litany of effects the Church sang about in the Exsultet on Saturday night. The whole Church — Peter, John, their successors and the whole Mystical Body says during the Easter season — say to us and through us to others, “Arise and walk,” be raised and start journeying, freely, following the footsteps of the Risen Lord knowing that he accompanies you along the way. The power of Easter, however, is meant to do something in us far greater than what happened in this crippled man in Jerusalem. But for that to take place we need to participate in this transition.

* Let’s enter into the change that takes place in the disciples of Emmaus in today’s Gospel. We could describe the change as a heart transplant. At the Easter Vigil, Ezekiel prophesies that the redemption will involve God’s sprinkling clean water upon us — our Baptism — removing from us our “stony hearts” and replacing them with “hearts of flesh,” placing his own spirit within us. We could rephrase that heart transplant in the words of today’s Gospel as a transition from “slowness of heart” to a “burning heart.” When Jesus anonymously and gently upbraids the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, he didn’t say “How slow of head,” “How dull of mind, you are not to believe all that Moses and the prophets taught,” but “How slow of heart.” Their hearts were literally retarded because they were unwilling to let go of some of their previously conceived notions. Eventually, after Jesus takes them on a journey, their hearts were racing, their hearts were burning, as Jesus spoke to them along the way. That journey was a retracing of the steps of salvation history showing how all of it pointed to how the Messiah needed to suffer to help the two disciples — who had been leaving Jerusalem and symbolically the place of God, and who had been heading into the sunset instead of the rising sun — see that Jesus’ crucifixion and death were not a contradiction of the Jews’ Messianic hopes but a confirmation. Jesus helped them to see that what happened to him was the fulfillment of the killing of the just man Abel, of the sacrifice of Isaac, of the Passover lamb led to the slaughter, of the just man beset, of the Suffering Servant, of Psalms 22 and 69 and so many others. That spiritual pilgrimage on which the anonymous wayfarer led the two disciples during their seven mile walk into the darkness of the night reawakened their hearts and heads. They were transformed.