Easter 3

Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; 1 Pt 1:17-21; Lk 24:13-35

VIDEO

“Breaking bread” is one of those biblical phrases,
like “putting words in someone’s mouth”
or “going the extra mile,”
that has woven its way 
into the English language
and is often used 
without any awareness of its source.
It originates in our Gospel reading for today—
“he was made known to them 
in the breaking of bread”—
and recurs in the book of Acts
as the name for the sacred meal
that we today call the Eucharist or Mass.

In our culture, even those 
with no knowledge of the Bible 
use this phrase to speak 
of a particular kind of eating.
No one speaks of “breaking bread”
when eating alone,
for the phrase suggests shared food.
And we tend to use it for 
particularly significant and meaningful 
instances of eating together:
perhaps a meal in which you bond with a new friend,
perhaps a meal at which you reunite or reconcile
with someone you have not seen in a long time 
or with from whom you’ve been estranged.
To break bread is to find a unity 
in the midst of brokenness and separation,
a meal of intimacy and companionship.
Hidden in this phrase “breaking bread”
are the Gospel values of generosity and justice,
of mercy and reconciliation,
and above all of solidarity and sacrifice.

But when a phrase like “breaking bread,”
and the notions of solidarity and sacrifice
that it enshrines,
are cut off from their Christian roots,
they can become only distant echoes
of the true promise of the Gospel,
echoes that might be misheard 
or, even worse, manipulated.
Separated from the story of salvation—
the story that Jesus unfolds
for the confused disciples
on the road to Emmaus—
the solidarity and sacrifice of broken bread 
might come to mean something quite different, 
and even opposed,
to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
Christian notions of solidarity and sacrifice
can be used to bless and sanctify 
other sorts of costly human undertakings
that do indeed unite people 
but which are at odds 
with the bread of peace
that Jesus breaks with his disciples.

The writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
best known for the classic book The Little Prince, 
was an aviator who lost his life
in the Second World War.
Reflecting on the way in which 
armed conflict can give meaning and unity 
to those who fight on the same side,
he wrote, “Men can, of course,
be stirred into life 
by being dressed up in uniforms 
and made to blare out chants of war. 
It must be confessed that this 
is one way for men 
to break bread with comrades 
and to find what they are seeking, 
which is a sense of something universal, 
of self-fulfillment. 
But of this bread men die” (A Sense of Life).
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry knew firsthand
how easily one might mistake
the feeling of solidarity attained in warfare
for the unity of God’s kingdom,
the sacrifice made to the nation
for a sacrifice made to God,
breaking the bread of death
for breaking the bread of life.

Unless you’ve been living 
in a remote monastery 
or in an underground bunker
(both of which might seem
like sensible life choices these days),
you are no doubt aware 
of the furor that has been stirred up
by Pope Leo’s remarks concerning peace,
in particular his questioning of
the justification of the war in Iran
and his statements that 
“God does not bless any conflict.
Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, 
the Prince of Peace, 
is never on the side of those 
who once wielded the sword 
and today drop bombs.” 

The ensuing furor has included 
the U.S. President taking to social media
to criticize the Pope as “weak on crime,”
to claim that Leo supports a nuclear-armed Iran,
and to take credit for Leo’s election as Pope,
as well as the Vice-President cautioning the Pope,
“If you're going to opine on matters of theology, 
you’ve got to be careful.”
Speaking for myself,
I have no idea what to make 
of the President’s remarks
(except to say that they are false),
and while I certainly agree 
that one ought to be careful 
when opining on theology,
I hardly think the Pope needs 
to be reminded of this
by the Vice President.

The general reaction 
of the Pope’s critics has been
that he ought to stay in his lane
and not meddle in politics.
But I think this criticism betrays 
a profound misunderstanding 
both of the nature of politics 
and of the role of the papacy.

Politics is not some 
amoral sphere of statecraft
where the will of the majority
(much less the will of the executive)
determines right or wrong,
good or evil.
From the right to life 
to the economy
to foreign policy,
our politics must be subjected
to moral evaluation and judgment.

And the role of the Pope 
is to aid us in making that moral judgment.
The role of the Pope
is the role we see Peter exercising
in the book of Acts:
to bear witness to the risen Jesus,
who is the king who lays claim
not to some small sliver of our lives
but to the whole of life,
to matters of wealth and poverty,
of peace and war,
good and evil,
life and death.
The role of the Pope 
is to ensure that the Word of God
is not a series of faint cultural echoes
that sanctify the schemes of men
but the two-edged sword that penetrates
“even between soul and spirit, 
joints and marrow…
able to discern reflections 
and thoughts of the heart.”
The role of the Pope 
is to help us see the difference 
between breaking the bread of death
and breaking the bread of life.

Pope Leo is not telling us
that we cannot be good Catholics
and good Americans at the same time.
But he may well be telling us
that being a good Catholic
might have to redefine
what it means to be a good American.
He is telling us that 
if we break bread with Jesus
so that our eyes are opened 
to his presence with us on the way,
we might have to walk that road differently
than we did before.
As Leo’s predecessor of blessed memory,

Pope Francis, put it:
“we who share this Bread 
of unity and of peace 
are called to love every face; 
to mend every tear; 
to be, always and everywhere, 
builders of peace.” 

So let us pray for our Pope Leo,
let us pray for our President and nation,
and let us pray that God,
the compassionate,
the merciful, 
might have mercy on us all.

Easter 3

Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35

VIDEO

“He was made known to them 
in the breaking of bread.”
Not when he appeared beside them,
walking along the road;
not when he interpreted to them 
what referred to him
in all the Scriptures;
not when he accepted 
their invitation to stay with them,
since it was nearly evening
and the day was almost over;
not even when he sat down 
with them at table.
But only when he took bread
and blessed
and broke
and gave.

Not just bread,
but broken bread.
Not the artfully shaped loaf
fresh from the oven;
not the neatly sliced Wonder Bread
in its plastic sleeve;
not even the perfect round host,
right-sized for individual consumption;
but bread broken and torn,
passed from human hand to human hand.

Why the breaking of bread?
Why this act to open their eyes 
to his risen presence?
Why this act to open our eyes
to his presence among us today?

We know him in the breaking of bread
because to know Jesus Christ 
is to know him crucified and risen,
which is to know him as the one 
broken by human hands,
the one whom we killed,
“using lawless men to crucify him.”
It is to know him as the one
whom his Father would not 
abandon to the nether world
nor let his flesh see corruption.
It is to know him as 
the spotless unblemished lamb,
known and loved by his Father 
before the foundation of the world
but revealed to us in these last days.
We know him in broken bread
because we know him 
as the reconciling sacrifice
that rescues us from futility
and makes our peace with God;
we know him as the one who seeks out
those who would flee his presence;
we know him as the one 
who lets his life be broken
so that each of us might have a share in it.

We know him in the breaking of bread
because we cannot know him 
in our isolation 
but only in our gathering.
Christ cannot be known in my bread,
but only in our bread—
we pray, “give us this day our daily bread”—
and in order to become our bread
Christ must be broken and shared.
As St. Paul writes, “The bread that we break, 
is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 
Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, 
are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf”

(1 Corinthians 10:16-17 ).
As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, 
“The unity of the mystical body 
is the fruit of the true body received”

(Summa theologiae III q. 82 a. 9 ad 2).

Our unity in Christ involves the breaking of his body.
This truth is perhaps obscured by the custom
of using individual host for communion,
but even so, at every Mass, 
the priest ritually breaks the bread
as we sing to Christ the Lamb who was slain,
begging him for mercy and for peace.
For it is only by the gift of his mercy and peace
that we are united to Christ the head;
it is only by his mercy and peace
that we who are many can become one body
by sharing in the bread that has been broken.

He is made known to us in the breaking of bread
because our unity in Christ is a costly unity,
a unity of sacrifice and sharing.
It is costly because it is our unity 
within the body of the one who, 
though risen,
still bears the marks of his breaking,
the one who makes his flesh the bread of heaven
by consecrating it on the cross to God.
It is costly because if I am to eat 
the bread of heaven,
I must give up my bread for our bread,
and in so doing I may find myself 
in communion with those 
whom I don’t very much like,
but whom I am called to love 
as Christ himself.

Sacrifice and sharing,
consecration and communion:
these pretty much sum up what happens
each time we break bread,
each time we celebrate the Eucharist.
And they pretty much sum up the Christian life.
The broken bread Christ gives to us
draws us into his sacrificial love
by drawing us into the life of his body.
In every Eucharist we celebrate 

we can see this happen,
for in the breaking of bread
the veil is pierced 
between this world and God’s eternity,
and our eyes are opened.
And like those disciples at Emmaus
we return to the road,
carrying with us the news of resurrection,
fragments of the bread of heaven
scattered in the world 
in the time of our sojourning,
but yet united to him and each other
in faith, hope, and love.
Lamb of God, 
whose breaking makes us whole,
grant us mercy,
grant us peace.

Easter 3 (Seventh Sunday in Corona Time)

Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35

I am not sure whether it is really right
to have a “favorite” resurrection story,
but if such things are allowed
then I’m pretty sure
that the story of Emmaus is mine.
In part it is because of how
the experience of the two unnamed disciples
connects so closely with our own:
they come to recognize the risen one
in the breaking of the bread.
For them, as for us,
it is the moment of sacramental encounter
in which the hidden presence of Jesus
is made manifest to the eyes of faith
through his gift of himself to us.

Of course, for many of us it has been weeks
since we have been able to receive that gift sacramentally.
And while we believe that this does not deprive us
of the presence of the risen Christ,
it has for many been difficult
to live without the bread of life.
If nothing else, we have come to feel more deeply
how important that sacramental gift is to us,
how crucial it is to our living with the risen Christ.
And even though we know that one day
we will sit once again at the Lord’s table,
we don’t know when that day will be.

Of course, this is just one of the many things
that we do not know these days.
We don’t know when a vaccine will be developed,
or if we’ll find toilet paper at the store,
or how long we will be working from home
or out of work entirely,
or when we or our kids will return to school
or whether plans we have made for next fall
will have to be scrapped.
But though the current pandemic
might make the uncertainty of our lives
more undeniable,
that uncertainty is a part of every life,
every day, pandemic or not.
It is maybe only in retrospect
that we have any idea at all
of what is really going on around us,
and even then we understand our own lives
only partially, in the dark mirror of memory.

And this is the other part of the Emmaus story
that I can identify with.
The two disciples fleeing Jerusalem,
who meet the risen Jesus on the road,
know that momentous events are occurring around them
but they really have no idea of what those events mean,
how they fit into a larger picture,
what they stem from or where they will lead,
which rumors should be believed
and which should be dismissed.
And, of course, the main thing
that they do not understand
is that the stranger who walks beside them
is the central figure in these events,
and the key to unlocking their mysterious significance:
the living one who has conquered death and the grave.
So they are like us in this regard as well:
they are clueless.
Like us, they have no idea
what their past means
or what the future holds.
Like us, they are caught up in events
too momentous for them to grasp,
and too overwhelming for them to ignore.
They, like us, can make their own
St. Augustine’s confession of perplexity:
“I am scattered in times
whose order I do not understand.
The storms of incoherent events
tear to pieces my thoughts,
the inmost entrails of my soul” (Confessions bk. 11).

So they flee, trying to leave behind
all the fear and confusion and grief of Jerusalem,
the fear and confusion and grief of Jesus’ cross,
the fear and confusion and grief of rumored resurrection.
And we flee as well.
Perhaps not physically,
but all of us to some degree
try to flee the messiness and danger of reality,
seeking refuge in fantasy or ignorance,
seeking a safe and easily graspable vision of life
offered by the various ideologies of the world.
But even as we flee, he comes to walk beside us,
unrecognized,
and yet causing our hearts
to burn within us.
He meets us in our fear
to light in us the fire of his truth,
a truth we can grasp only partially,
a truth we cannot ignore.
He comes to show us how his word
can help us find the pattern of love
amidst the seeming chaos of events.
He comes to turn us back
from denial and ignorance and simplistic ideologies,
sending us back to Jerusalem,
that place of fear and confusion and grief.
But he sends us back now filled with his fire
to shed light in darkness
and kindle hope in those grown hopeless.
He sends us back fortified with the bread of life,
our eyes opened to his presence with us,
even in the place of fear and confusion,
especially in the place of fear and confusion:
the place of the cross,
but also the place of the empty, defeated grave.

The story of Emmaus is the story
of hope reborn in the midst of chaos and confusion,
of doubt and disappointment.
The story of Emmaus is our story,
for we too have broken bread with the risen one
and felt our hearts burn within us.
May Christ hasten the day of our deliverance
and may God have mercy on us all.

Easter 3

Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24: 13-35

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once noted
that life could only be understood backwards;
but it must be lived forwards.
Of course, this is not something
that we need a philosopher to tell us.
The passage of time gives us a perspective on our lives
that allows us to understand past events
better than we did when we were going through them.
I am pretty sure that my fifty-two-year-old self
understands my twenty-two-year-old self
better than my twenty-two-year-old self did.
My twenty-two-year-old self had no idea
what people and events were truly significant in my life.
I thought that the girl who had just broken up with me
was the most important person in my life,
little realizing that the Jesuit priest who,
in casual conversation,
suggested a year of volunteer service after college
would end up being the occasion
of my moving to Texas
where I met my future wife,
which led to three children,
and a job in Baltimore,
and me standing here today,
in this church,
speaking to all of you.
What seemed at the time
like a casual conversation
with a near-stranger
was a key turning point in my life.
When I look back,
I tell the story of my twenty-two-year-old self
in a way that my twenty-two-year-old self never could,
a way that is not simply different, but truer,
because life can only be understood backwards.

We see this in the story
of the disciples on the way to Emmaus.
It is only after Christ had shown himself to them
in the breaking of the bread
that they could know the true significance
of the stranger who had met them on the road.
He had walked with them,
listening to them recount a story
that they were not yet in a position to understand,
the story of the death of Jesus
and the strange reports of his empty tomb.
Looking back they say,
“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way
and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Looking back they say,
“The Lord is truly risen!”
But as they walked with him,
they had no idea.
What they come to identify
as their hearts burning within them
was likely in the moment simply a vague feeling
that they could not yet understand or name.
They only begin to understand this event,
to know the significance of this person,
in looking backwards
from the perspective of their eyes
being opened to the risen Jesus
in the breaking of the bread.

Of course, even when we look backwards,
we are still living forwards.
Lest my fifty-two-year-old self
should begin to get too smug,
thinking how much more I know
than my twenty-two-year-old self,
I must remember that at some point
I will be looking back on this day
and understanding it far better than I do now.
Kierkegaard wrote that,
“life at any given moment
cannot really ever be fully understood;
exactly because there is no single moment
where time stops completely” (Journals 1843).
The self that is trying to understand backwards
is the same self that is living forwards, on the road,
and so we must constantly re-tell the story of our lives.
If my fifty-two-year-old self
better understands my twenty-two-year-old self,
then presumably my eighty-two-year-old self,
should God grant me that many years,
will better understand both of those selves
and doubtless tell the story of my life
differently than I do now.
Who is the stranger walking beside me
on the road this day
who will, looking backward,
prove to be the key to the story of my life?
Living forward, on the road,
I never truly understand myself
because I have not yet reached
the end of the journey;
I am not yet in God’s kingdom,
where time shall be fulfilled.

Yet that is not entirely true.
In the story of Emmaus there comes a moment
when their eyes are opened
and they see the truth
of the story they have been living.
While he is with them at table,
he takes bread,
says the blessing,
breaks it,
and gives it to them.
In that moment, the kingdom of God
makes itself present to them
through a sacramental sign.

And for us too, in our Eucharist,
Jesus gives us the story of our lives,
and the story of our world,
looking, as it were, backward from the Kingdom.
We know him in the breaking of the bread,
but we also come know ourselves –
or at least we catch a glimpse
of what our lives might truly mean.
The bread of himself that Christ breaks and gives to us
is a foretaste of that heavenly supper of the Lamb,
where one day, our long journey ended,
we will feast and tell tales:
we shall tell the story of our lives
as we will then see them,
bathed in the light of resurrection:
a story with unanticipated plot twists
and unexpected heroes.

But even now,
with Christ,
at this table,
we catch a glimpse of that final story,
the story of the stranger
who has walked beside us,
the story of words
that made our hearts burn within us,
the story of the one
who is life itself,
accompanying us through the valley of death.
On this day, at this table,
we catch a glimpse of that day
when, as St. Augustine says,
“we shall rest and see,
see and love,
love and praise” (Civ. Dei 22.30).

Easter 3

Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35

If you will indulge me for a moment of grammatical reflection,

think about the word “hope” in relation to verb tenses.

Hope is normally something we speak of in the present tense,

as when we say, “I hope it won’t rain tomorrow”

or, as in our second reading today, when St. Peter reminds us

that our “faith and hope are in God.”

While hope is always directed to the future,

we normally think about it

as something that is going on in the present.

Hope in the present tense is a hope that we possess –

a living hope.

But our first reading gives us an example

of hope spoken in the future tense,

when Peter quotes Psalm 16, saying,

“my flesh, too, will dwell in hope.”

It seems at first a bit odd to speak of hope

as something we will have in the future,

as if we were to say, “tomorrow I will hope it doesn’t rain.”

Maybe what we have here is something like a hope for hope –

a hope that we do not yet experience, but which we desire.

What about hope spoken in the past tense?

What about when we say, faced with our soggy picnic,

“I had hoped that it wouldn’t rain today”?

Or, perhaps, “I hoped that this job interview would work out,”

or “We were hoping that the tumor was benign,”

or “I hoped we would grow old together.”

In every statement of hope placed in the past tense

we hear echoes of a story

of disappointment

or disillusion,

of broken dreams

and abandoned aspirations.

This is what we hear echoing in the words of the disciples

as they converse with the unrecognized Jesus

on the road to Emmaus:

“we were hoping

that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”

These are words full

of the pathos of hope in the past tense:

“we were hoping. . . ,”

with the implied-but-unstated conclusion:

“. . . but now we hope no longer.”

These words sum up the shattering effect of the crucifixion

on Jesus’s followers:

they speak of a heritage of hope

that had been bequeathed to the people of Israel,

a hope for a savior who would free them from oppression;

they speak of the hope that in Jesus

all of God’s promises would be made good;

they speak of the death of that hope on Mount Calvary

and its burial in the garden tomb.

Perhaps only a hope of such comprehensive grandeur –

a hope that everything would be set right –

could come crashing down with such devastating force.

The disciples’ words speak of a hope

that has been so thoroughly snuffed out

that even the reports of the women

about the empty tomb

cannot bring it back to life.

Indeed, in their disappointment,

the very presence of Jesus walking beside them

goes unrecognized.

But, of course, the story does not end there.

We are told how, as they walk along together,

the risen Jesus explains to them

the true meaning of that heritage of hope

that had been so disappointed:

how it was “necessary that the Christ should suffer these things

and enter into glory.”

While this is not enough to reawaken their hope,

to allow them to recognize the risen Jesus,

it moves them just enough to ask this stranger

to stay the night with them.

Perhaps this is a case of hope in the future tense:

his words awaken in them a desire to someday hope again.

And so, as night falls, Jesus sits at table with them,

takes the bread,

says the blessing,

breaks it

and gives it to them.

And then their eyes are opened;

they recognize him in the breaking of the bread;

hope is reawakened in them

and they can see the truth of the risen Jesus;

the hope that was just a memory,

something that seemed irretrievably past,

becomes a present reality

as they receive the bread of life at Christ’s table.

And it can be that way with us, as well.

As we come to recognize Christ at the table of the altar

our hopes that had fallen into the past tense

can be spoken again in the present tense.

We who said, “we were hoping. . . ,”

with the implied-but-unstated conclusion:

“. . . but now we hope no longer,”

can know in the breaking of the bread

the presence of Christ, risen and alive,

just as those disciples at Emmaus did.

And a hope that knows the risen Christ

is a hope that can be spoken in the present tense.

We are surrounded by things

that seem to offer us hope:

medical breakthroughs

that promise cures deadly diseases,

forecasts of economic revival

that could fulfill out material wants,

and even the killing of a particularly evil man,

whose death might promise

an end to violence and terror.

But all of these hopes

can so easily slip into the past tense.

For all of our medical breakthroughs,

we still die.

Every economic revival

is followed by a downturn,

and our material wants remain insatiable.

The killing of one evil man

typically generates two or three more,

ready to take up his mission of violence and terror.

And we find ourselves saying, “We were hoping. . .”

But as Christians we believe

that the hope that we receive at this altar –

a hope that is born in the breaking of the bread,

a hope that is raised up with the risen Jesus –

is a hope that is always spoken in the present tense.

Christ is risen,

giving us a hope that will never die again.

So let us leave behind all illusory hopes,

which so quickly slip into the past tense,

and cling to the one hope

that rises with Christ and lives forever.