Always With Us

In the poignant story of the disciples of Emmaus we see the Church’s Easter faith grow through the way in which Jesus speaks of himself. Faith is not given to us once and for all, as if it were a wrapped gift that we only have to open and then enjoy. Faith is a living reality, and therefore something organic in us that either grows or dies. In this Emmaus story we see very clearly how—in the initial relationship of these two disciples with Jesus— faith and doubt, joy and sadness, enthusiasm and discouragement, coexist side by side. Here is the true existential situation of the Christian believer in this world. How wonderful that God understands our shakiness so well!

Just because we declare ourselves Christians, and perhaps half-consciously boast of possessing an unshakable faith, we cannot (without becoming hypocrites) deny the dark and uncertain aspects of our hearts. In this present time of our earthly life we Christians, too, are tossed about like leaves in the storm of common human experience, which includes, along with joys, also sufferings, vicissitudes, wars, conflicts, epidemics, and divisions within the Church and within Christian families. In a word, we Christians, like everyone else, are fragile beings—vulnerable, wrapped in anguish and full of fear, exactly like the rest of humanity. The only light we can have in us comes precisely not from us but from God through his Christ; and, even so, this light of Christ is not always easy to see, because we do not always have the eyes of a mature faith.

We have just heard in the gospel that, while the two disciples were conversing and discussing together on their way to Emmaus, Jesus approached and began to walk with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. They looked at him with sad, hangdog faces. And they said to Jesus, You alone are a stranger? Do you not know what has happened? Walking along in the presence of Mystery, the disciples speak to Jesus about Jesus only as a prophet. And because this ‘prophet’ of theirs has been crucified, they are now totally shocked. They don’t know what to think of the whole event. And the women’s accounts of Jesus being raised from the dead are not enough to dispel their dismay and confusion. To believe, these two disciples, like the Apostle Thomas, need the presence of Jesus himself, living and visible before them and with them.

For me, the most surprising and magnificent aspect in this drama is the fact that Jesus is truly present beside them all this time, in the midst of their situation of doubt and sadness, without them even remotely suspecting it! This is a fundamental fact of the life of the Risen One: Jesus is present to us always, in the intimacy and immediacy of our lives, even and especially when we do not know it, even and especially when we are lamenting our fate as unfortunate castoffs, thinking that perhaps God has forgotten and abandoned us! The active presence with us of Emmanuel, his continuous accompaniment of our lives, his invisible guidance and help at every step we take in this world: this reality does not depend at all on our will, or on our intellectual understanding, or even less on our psychological or physical state of wellbeing or illness. The Resurrection overturns our every human expectation and measure of failure or success.

All the omnipotence, all the wisdom, all the mercy of God, are always unconditionally present and active in the Risen Jesus in our lives, simply because God loves us. It is not our will-power, or our intelligence, or our imagination, or our energy, or our managerial skills—whether individually or collectively—that merit or activate God’s presence in our lives and in the daily life of the world around us. Christ is present with us solely by the power of his Resurrection, which anticipates all our needs, all our despair and sickness, and even our death itself. We and all that is ours already have been assumed in advance into the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.

We believe in God not by any innate or acquired human power, ability, or intensity of desire, but solely by the work and power of the Risen Christ in us. This means that it is not even the power of our faith or the intensity of our prayer that makes the Lord appear in our midst, as if faith were an act of magic. What is involved is absolutely the opposite: it is the work of God’s grace, which is already acting in us unseen and unsuspected from the beginning of time. It is this work of grace that makes it possible for us to recognize the presence of the living Jesus among us. Faith is precisely the act and ability to recognize who God is and what he is already doing for us. We don’t make God do anything! We do not cause God’s intervention and presence, but can only recognize them after the event and give thanks for them. If we have doubts, if we are sad and discouraged, this in no way means that the Lord is not present, but rather that our faith needs to grow further so that we can become aware that God has been present with us all along, stimulating by his hidden presence—precisely!—our growth in faith.

As proof of the truth that Jesus is in himself the Resurrection and the Life, the Emmaus story concludes with the Eucharistic blessing of the bread by Jesus and by his vanishing corporeally from our sight as he leaves his Word and Sacrament to the Church. It is as if from now on Jesus disappears into the bread and wine which the disciples are holding in their hands, disappears too into the way they treat each other and all human beings, God’s children. Jesus trusts us, and therefore entrusts to us this Sacrament of his Presence, trusting that we will be to the world an epiphany of his presence in us! Christ wants to disappear totally into us so that each of our thoughts and feelings and acts may become an expression of his Real Presence in us, his devoted disciples. The Lord Jesus is risen in us, alleluia!

Homily by Father Simeon.