Our solemnity today of the Body and Blood of Christ — Corpus Christi, in popular parlance — is a profound veneration of God’s gift of the Son to humanity as our Savior. Jesus gave us his literal body and blood as a sacrifice for our sins — those already committed and those yet to be committed — and he gave us his body and blood in the Eucharist so that we could do likewise in memory of him.
Now, if he were here with us today, and told us we had to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and we’d never heard that before, would we freak out as much as the Jews did in today’s Gospel?
As they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going,
suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.
They said, “Men of Galilee,
why are you standing there looking at the sky?
This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven
will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
Let’s join the friends of Jesus as they stood together that day in the First Century A.D., and for a moment let’s assume we have the same knowledge of science and other academic disciplines that they did.
When it became clear, two or three months or so ago, that the novel coronavirus was becoming dangerous, then really dangerous, then life-threatening, most of us bugged out à la M*A*S*H from our places of work or school. Quickly. Messily.
Very quickly. Very messily.
We grabbed the essentials to continue as essential workers; we powered down everything else; we scooted out of wherever with barely a “See ya” or a “Take care.”
Unlike mobile Army surgical hospitals, we never had bug-out drills. We never practiced shutting it all down and setting it all up somewhere else. We exited without a playbook, making it up as we went along. Some things we got right. Too many things, we got wrong.
We should start with a little history, my personal history. Nine years plus two weeks ago, the day after my ordination, I preached officially for the first time at my Mass of Thanksgiving, and it was this Gospel. Jesus as the Sheepgate. So it would be cheating — never a good thing for a man of the cloth — for me to dredge up that homily and post it today, hoping that my beloved parishioners would (a) have forgotten it or (b) remember it yet forgive me for playing a greatest hit.
And I think — I hope — my preaching has matured a bit since that nervous first homily.
The story of the Road to Emmaus is profound and iconic. For anyone who believes in the living God, who wants to see the face of Jesus, who wonders if Jesus is always beside them — he is — the notion of hearts ablaze with love and desire for the Lord is immediately relatable.
We know that Jesus is present in the breaking of the bread. That when two or more are gathered in his name, he is there. In Luke’s account, two men are discussing the events surrounding the crucifixion and Resurrection — thus, two gathered in Jesus’ name — and he joined them and became known to them as he broke the bread. As he said he would.
And then Jesus left them, but not really, because he has never, will never leave any of us.
Beautiful. Rich with make-you-think meaning and symbolism. And kinda neat and tidy, wrapped up and tied with a bow.
So much, in fact, it’s almost a fool’s errand to preach about this Gospel, because it takes little explanation and even less pondering to find the rich meaning in it.
So what else can we take away beyond the familiar?
Well, the Road to Emmaus is a rare Gospel in that its strong call to action is spiritual, personal and individual: Each of us is called to renew our relationship with Jesus and to seek him in every place he can be found. In this Gospel, there’s no call for us to serve the least among us, as Luke will provide in the next chapter. There’s no urging for us to become fishers of men, to go and spread the Good News.
No, on this road we’re asked to keep our eyes open for a divine traveling companion.
But beware of highway hypnosis.
As we deepen our bond with Almighty God into a mature relationship, it becomes easier and easier, it becomes more commonplace to know where to find Jesus, and to do it.
For starters, we find Christ in everyone we meet, six feet apart or otherwise.
After a while, though, doing things that have become easy and commonplace slips into the realm of rote and robotic. We might as well be doing them in our sleep.
Which doesn’t sound like our hearts were burning. It doesn’t sound like something Jesus would want.
It’s human nature, though, to stay in our comfort zones, to settle for Pizza Hut and McDonald’s because they’re consistent even if they’re not great (far from it). It’s human nature to rely on habit or even instinct when the goal is familiar.
But what if it weren’t?
Think for a second about how Luke describes what happened after Jesus broke the bread:
“With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him.”
When was the last time you had a truly eye-opening experience?
More importantly, when was the last time you allowed yourself to have an eye-opening experience? To be surprised or even a little startled?
We play some version of peekaboo with babies, then ease them into jack-in-the-boxes, piñatas, and graduate to haunted houses and hay rides and Great Adventure’s Fright Fest. We try out the newest daredevil roller coaster to get our hearts pounding on the next unexpected switchback.
And then — thud! — we grow out of it.
Maybe we don’t need Kingda Ka anymore, but we still need the capacity to be awed.
By all means, seek the Lord where he may be found, and call to him while he is still near.
But seek the Lord where you don’t expect to find him.
In a sunrise, a sunset, a thunderstorm, a gentle breeze. In the “burr-dee, burr-dee, burr-dee” call of a cardinal to his mate. In the fragrance of a hyacinth. In the cold and wet of dewy grass on bare feet. In a blinding sunbeam that sets your face aglow.
That can set your heart ablaze.
On the Road to Emmaus, when a figurative or literal grasshopper jumps at you from out of nowhere, and you feel that adrenaline rush, thank your Creator for your life, thank your Messiah for saving it and thank the Spirit for the wisdom and grace to recognize our Triune God in everything.
Welcome the surprise. Come back to life, heart ablaze, because of it. Because of Christ within it.
The Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed — their names derive from the Latin “credo,” “I believe.” Even the most recent (and much-maligned) translation of the Roman Missal swapped in “I believe …” for the former “We believe …”, to assert that each of us individually embraces the truths contained in these statements of faith.
God the Father, the Creator.
Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten son, the Messiah who saved all of humanity from sin and death.
The Holy Spirit, who sustains humanity on our path home to God’s kingdom with abundant grace for all who ask for it.
These truths also form the core of the baptismal liturgy, spoken as the encapsulated promises that parents make on behalf of their children during this Sacrament of Initiation — promises that all the faithful renew during the Easter Vigil. The conclusion to this litany wraps it all up neatly and reverently: “This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church, and we are proud to profess it, through Christ Our Lord. Amen.”
(Quick aside: As a youngster I thought the Nicene Creed was the “nicer creed” because it didn’t say “hell” while the Apostles’ Creed did.)
So our creed, in whichever form we choose to proclaim, is a complete summary of who we are as Catholic Christians, a fits-in-your-pocket list of things we believe. Much like the oft-quoted/paraphrased “If you pray nothing else but ‘thank you,’ that’s enough,” from Meister Eckhart, our creed keeps beliefs simple, compact. Easy to break open.
And that’s a wonderful thing.
In today’s Gospel from the evangelist John, Jesus tells Didymus, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” Those include us, of course; we have not seen Jesus in the flesh.
And yet … we have, if we are in sync with the 25th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 25:33-40), seeing Christ in all humanity, especially the least of us.
Because true faith requires action, which will return — must return — when the coronavirus crisis ends. The second Letter of St. James (Jm 2:14-26) declares faith without works to be dead. Harsh, but true.
So let’s be un-harsh.
Faith with works is alive, very much so.
Now, what do we know about living things?
First, they must be fed. To feed faith, we have the Eucharist, the Word, the reflections and ponderings and insights of Church — us, all of us — guided by the Spirit. Check.
They need shelter. Our souls and our hearts are perfect places for faith to reside. Check.
Living things should be exercised regularly. That’s where doing good works comes in. We need only eyes to see and ears to hear to know what needs to be done. Even now, physically distancing from each other, we can use any number of technologies to be social, to support each other. To do little tasks for one another, six feet apart and heavily sanitized, that recognize Christ in all of us. Check.
They should be loved and embraced. Hmmm.
“Credo” is an action verb. When we were baptized, when we repented and reconciled for the first time, when we received First Holy Communion, even when we were confirmed, we were not supposed to put faith on auto-pilot. We weren’t supposed to say “Sounds good to me; I’ll buy in,” and aim ourselves in a straight line at a constant speed on a smooth path to Heaven. No adjustments ever needed.
No, we were not supposed to.
“Credo” is an action verb that guides our lives full of twists and turns. Lives with a whole lot of activity.
Activity requires choices, which is why we must choose to love and embrace our faith. To think about, to deeply ponder what we believe, and then wrap our arms around it.
Daily.
Hourly.
Maturely.
Children believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny out of simple faith. They believe in something that brings them joy, and when they learn the truth, depending on how old and how mature they are, either they move on and they’re fine, or they have to have their naive belief pried from them, and they’re heartbroken.
As adults, we’re blessed with greater wisdom, greater experience, and far more options. We’re blessed with a grown-up, two-way relationship with God.
We’re blessed with the joy of Easter truth — that Jesus died for us, for all of humanity, to fulfill God’s promise of salvation. That Jesus rose from the dead of his own accord, to destroy death and show the way to the rooms he is preparing for us in his Father’s house. That Jesus is with us always, and that his Spirit is with us anytime we call.
There are many ways we as Christians can be the sheep of Jesus on judgment day, can be the ones who fed and clothed and visited him, even without immediately recognizing him. That’s faith with works, faith in action.
But consider this: The first thing we can do to put faith into action is to believe. To choose to believe. To choose to grab hold of the faith the way a parent holds a child’s hand in a crosswalk, the way a lifeguard clings to a drowning person and swims to shore, the way a person in peril finds that last ounce of strength when they’re dangling off the edge of a cliff.
To choose to weave Truth, God’s Truth, all of it, into the very fabric of who we are.
No, we haven’t seen the 33-year-old Nazarene carpenter and touched his wounds, as Thomas was finally able to, but we do see wounded 3-year-olds and 63-year-olds and 93-year-olds, and our active, energized faith is our blessing to them.
There’s a viral video making the rounds, a rather simple one of a gentleman mowing the lawn. At first glance, it’s nothing out of the ordinary: a retiree going back and forth over the grass, making nice straight passes of trimmed fescue and rye. Another Pleasant Valley Sunday, to borrow a phrase.
But this is a Good News video, because the man, a former paratrooper, is doing yard work for a neighboring family while their dad is deployed overseas with the military. The lawn-cutter promised he’d take care of the family’s property while the trooper was away, because that’s what comrades do.
In this little video, one person is keeping a promise.
Promises made, promises kept.
Which is the story of Easter.
We’re familiar with the theological underpinnings of Christ’s Resurrection, and its mind-blowing significance. How it — how He — changed the world for the better by accepting an unjust death as a sign of ultimate love for his friends and for everyone, and then rising from the dead, as no one had done before and no one has done since, to conquer the scourge of death that we believe came into the world when Adam and Eve sinned.
Jesus did it out of love, but he also did it out of obligation, to fulfill a promise the Creator made to humanity at the beginning of our relationship with God.
In fact, Jesus made this ultimate sacrifice to keep myriad promises, because God’s covenant with his people is chock-full of them.
Promises made, promises kept.
The beautiful — extensive — Liturgy of the Word at our Easter Vigil is the story, and the history, of God’s promises.
The promise to the earliest people that, at the proper time, their sins would be forgiven. And forgiven. And forgiven.
The promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as countless as the stars in the sky or the sands on the shore.
The promise to Moses that he would lead his people to, quite simply, the Promised Land.
The promise to the Chosen People that a savior, a Messiah, would be born of the house of David.
In the early days of God’s relationship with his people, the promises were covenantal; that is, they were as much of a contract as they were one person’s vows. The Israelites didn’t know I Am that well in the early days, so God wanted a few things in return before fulfilling the promises.
God knew of their stubbornness; he wanted them to know of his constancy and consistency.
And so, God had a straightforward list of please-dos to please me:
Obedience to those 10 little rules carved in stone, especially the one about strange gods.
Faith, belief and trust, usually manifested by obedience in a specific situation: Don’t look back as Sodom and Gomorrah burn. Follow the pillar of smoke. Wade into the sea. Keep kosher.
I’m keeping my promises, says God; can you say the same?
Then came Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, the fulfillment of all promises and the herald of a more mature relationship with our Triune God.
Jesus preached — preaches — the fuller use of a well-formed conscience and a directing of human curiosity to things of the spirit. Jesus calls God his father and, through The Lord’s Prayer, urges us all to do the same.
Though he was the fulfillment of Old Testament — Old Covenant — promises, Jesus made a few himself, to augment the continuing promises of his father.
Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I am there.
I will send my Spirit, the paraclete, the advocate, to guide you.
I go before you to make a home for you in my father’s house.
I will return for you.
This is my body. This is my blood of the new and everlasting covenant.
This New Testament of Jesus, indeed, is based on the notion of a more mature relationship with God, and we are challenged by its nature, its complexity. Challenged, but not impossibly so.
And like his father, Jesus has an ask. Not challenging or complex, but simple, beautiful, and achievable: Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Pay my love forward.
Jesus Christ is risen today. Alleluia! We sing it anew. Our triumphant holy day — Alleluia!
Christ is risen. Truly He is risen. Christos anesti! Alethos anesti!
And He is with us always.
But we are his hands and arms in the world now. Our eyes and ears are his, seeing the least among us, hearing their pleas for assistance.
Our coronavirus crisis has laid bare — as if that were really necessary — the wretched, festering wounds of inequality in our world, our nation, our towns. People of color, anyone who is poor or marginalized, are getting sick and dying at a far greater rate than better-off people who have easy access to health care, who can stay six feet apart in their homes and neighborhoods, and who can work from home instead of having to mop floors, wipe down every imaginable surface and stack boxes without protective equipment.
That doesn’t seem in sync with Love Your Neighbor as Yourself.
Jesus stretched out his arms on the cross and, in doing so, embraced the world. He rose, in a perfected form yet with his wounds still visible — thank you, Didymus — to remind us how far He was willing to go as a sign of his love.
Now, as Christ’s living body, it’s our turn to embrace the world, and perhaps suffer a wound or two in doing so.
And know in our hearts: Promises made, promises kept.
More importantly, when was the last time you allowed yourself to have an eye-opening experience? To be surprised or even a little startled?
Children believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny out of simple faith. They believe in something that brings them joy, and when they learn the truth, depending on how old and how mature they are, either they move on and they’re fine, or they have to have their naive belief pried from them, and they’re heartbroken.
But this is a Good News video, because the man, a former paratrooper, is doing yard work for a neighboring family while their dad is deployed overseas with the military. The lawn-cutter promised he’d take care of the family’s property while the trooper was away, because that’s what comrades do.
This New Testament of Jesus, indeed, is based on the notion of a more mature relationship with God, and we are challenged by its nature, its complexity. Challenged, but not impossibly so.