3rd Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2017 - Homily - 1
There is a show on TV that I’m sure many of you have seen called Undercover Boss. And the premise of the show is that the CEO of some large company leaves his corporate head office in order to pose as a trainee in different parts of the enterprise. He’ll spend time working with employees on the factory floor, in distribution, in service delivery, with the sales force, and various other parts of the operation to get a feel for how the company actually functions. Since he is undercover, the employees don’t realize that they are working with the head hauncho, and think he is just some guy off the street.
At the end of each episode, the employees that the CEO had worked with are summonsed to the head office for a meeting, and in this meeting the CEO will introduce himself, and reveal that he is the boss. And in that moment, you can see the gears turning in the employees’ heads with unbelief, surprise and some fear. And in that instant when the boss reveals himself, I’m sure they are turning over three basic questions in their mind: 1) is this for real, or is somebody playing a joke on me? 2) the day I worked with this guy, did I say something stupid or do something wrong?; and 3) Why am I here? Why did they set up this meeting?
And in today’s gospel, I think this is exactly how the disciples react when Jesus reveals Himself to them. They recognized after the fact that something was indeed different in their encounter with this unknown man – they said “…were are hearts not burning within while he was talking to us along the road”. They had heard that Jesus was missing from the tomb, but still didn’t know what all this really meant. And like the CEO in the TV show who begins to explain what’s going on, so Jesus does the same as he fills them in.
He breaks open the word, and shows them how all of the OT prophecies point to him. The gospel says that Jesus “…interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures”.
And in each Mass that we attend, we become like that amazed and somewhat nervous employee being summoned to head office on our own Road to Emmaus. We are full of joy entering into God’s presence, but still not fully understanding what is to come. We break open the Word each time we come to Church through the readings, and reflect on its meaning in our lives with the help of a homilist, just like Jesus explained the scripture to his followers. The message always points directly or indirectly to repentance, which is a call to change our lives in some way for the better, pointing to growth in love for God, which ultimately points to the truth of preparing our souls for eternal life.
And as we continue the liturgy following the homily, Jesus then fully reveals himself to us in the breaking of the bread as the disciples learned on the road to Emmaus, and we receive him in his full body, soul and divinity which is a physical presence every bit as real as when Jesus appeared bodily to his first disciples, which once again is why celebration of Holy Communion is so very important. Jesus is God, and didn’t need to become a man to understand how we operate, but He knew that WE – you and I – needed Him to become one of us so that we could more easily relate to Him, and be better able to respond to His love.
Our Lord is with us always, whether we are conscious of it or not, and he wants us to recognize Him. Our eyes are often ‘kept from recognizing Him’, but he wants to reveal Himself to us through the scriptures, and most profoundly through the Eucharist. And, he wants to send us on a mission to proclaim the Good News by the example of our lives, and to preach God’s love through repentance and forgiveness. At every Mass and in every moment of the day we are on the road to Emmaus with our Lord – let us always be aware of His presence, and his desire to reveal Himself to all of us.