Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter

In today’s gospel from Saint Luke, we hear more of the Risen Christ’s appearances and revelations to his followers. The Risen Lord manifests Himself, then as now, in two different ways and in a third which is prior to the former two:

He is recognised as He makes the scriptures plain to them; 

He is recognised in the breaking of the bread;

He is personally present to them, and their whole being thrills at the presence of their creator and triumphant redeemer. They say: “were not our hearts burning within us as He talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?”

In this the time of Easter, we too, may rejoice in the presence of the Risen Lord. By reading the scriptures. For as His spirit inspired the writings, His same spirit is with us the readers to reveal to us their height and depth.  Thus we may read in the prophet Isaiah the passages on the Suffering Servant, and witness how the hopes and fears of all the years are met in the words of the Gospels as justice, truth and liberation triumphantly become one.

By the breaking of bread. And when two or three are gathered in His name in the breaking of the bread,  there in our midst is the Risen Lord.  By extension, wherever food and drink are joyfully and generously shared, in private houses or in public houses, by land or sea or on the sea shore, there is He in His glorious triumph.

By His presence with us. To those who know Him, and to those who had not known Him He gives the gift of kindly light which lights up all creation with the glory that He had with the Father before all things came to be. Peoples’ hearts burn within them at the presence of their Lord, their creator and their redeemer. They know Him as the Love from which they come and the desire to which they tend.  He is the joy of all creation, the end of Love longing, the fullness of everything desired and of everything not yet desired. This is the life which shines in the darkness and which the darkness cannot overcome, which the darkness did not overcome.  The Lord has risen, Alleluia.

Fr Anthony Keane OSB

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