Homily for the Morning Mass on the Third Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:14-33; Psalm 15; I Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35
Welcome to all of you watching at home. The livestreaming of Mass remains for me a strange experience. We don’t know who is there – speaking into a camera is somehow an artificial experience of communication. Whereas we’re learning how we can reach more people and use technology for good purposes we are also aware here that it is not a long-term substitute for meeting together in person as Church. The Church is Church through being gathered physically too – this is what the Greek word ‘ekklesia’ means – the gathered worshipping assembly. And so it is understandable if many of you out there on the other side of the camera feel there is still much missing, there is an absence. And at this awful time I have been hearing many stories too of the experience of distance, of absence. Absence from social groups. Absence from physical touch. Absence from loved ones – even as they suffer and die. Yes, and that can lead us in our spiritual lives to an experience of absence, the absence of God.
Well, we have an incredibly rich Gospel story today involving Our Lord and his first disciples after the resurrection. They are grieving for the death of their Lord. And Jesus walks alongside them and it is as though he is still absent. They don’t even recognise him. Remember Thomas last week, doubting it really was him. Remember Mary mistaking him for the gardener. He is not there. They are still on Holy Saturday in the empty tunnel of the tomb. He is absent.
So where is the good news in this story? For me there is much we can take away and reflect on this Sunday. Thomas’ heart was turned as Jesus showed him his hands and his side with the wounds of his crucifixion. And the two on the road to Emmaus will finally recognize him at the breaking of bread. As they recognize it is really him they are drawn to recognise who he really is. They embrace what it means to have faith in his presence among them. They embrace the God who is present not just in the happy times but in the brokenness, in the suffering, in the pain of absence and longing. God never abandons us. He calls us to look for him in the dark times so we can see him more clearly. Not that he bestows suffering on us but God calls us to learn from every experience in life.
The Gospel this Sunday, I believe, is urging us to look for his presence right here in the here and now. It may be that that’s too difficult right now. We may be looking after sick relatives, we may be ill ourselves, we may be getting tired of lockdown – well, most of us are perhaps, we may be on the front line in hospitals or homeless services. It may be we find it tough to pray at all right now we’re in the midst of it all. But I do believe that God calls us not to dismiss this time, however terrible it is, but to see it too as an invitation to renewal, reassessment of our priorities as human beings. Of who we are with our neighbour, with each other – the pandemic, I think, is showing us how we are all equal, from prime ministers to those on the streets, from sinners to those who live lives of great virtue. There is something about our common humanity made in God’s image which we are being invited to reassess and embrace. And, in these days when the streets of London are so empty and the air is so clean and unpolluted, we are perhaps realising the beauty of creation all the more. What is that saying to us of God’s presence and our priorities in caring for it for future generations?
For me I have, in these last couple of weeks, seen God’s presence very starkly. I’ve seen it in the huge number of volunteers who have come forward to telephone around those on their own. I’ve seen it in our volunteers helping with the homeless food service in Soho Square and hopefully next week a large group of volunteers in a large operation in Trafalgar Square. I’ve met Christ in those homeless left on the streets. I’ve seen God’s face in the staff and cooks in the Connaught Hotel putting themselves on the line cooking 600 meals a day for the homeless with no recompense expected – Hindus, Muslims, people of no particular faith, doing this because it simply was the right thing to do to save lives of the most vulnerable. That’s where Jesus is right now. He is breaking the bread in front of our very eyes. He is showing us his wounds. He is drawing us in to be more like him in whose image we are made. He is inviting us to use this time to realise how we are all interconnected with each other and with our world. He is calling us to a new humanity.
These last few weeks, I have to say, have been busier than most of us expected. Some were expecting this time to be quiet. Instead there has been more activity, more trying to connect with each other, more service of the needy. And it’s been much more difficult on account of the strict rules around everything. I hope that in this time we may also be drawn more to contemplation. Pope Francis singles this out as something humanity has lost. We run around trying to do so much and find insufficient time to stop and reflect. But we need to. We need to because we are human, made in his image. Take some time this week to reflect on where I will look for Christ in my life? Where will I recognise him on the road? Maybe talk about that to a friend, to your lover, to someone else, on the ‘phone, at home, even perhaps on Face Time or on Zoom! Where will I see his face in the world around me? Where will I see him break the bread before my eyes? How am I being called to be more perfectly more human as I continue on that road to the risen life that awaits us?
Fr Dominic Robinson S.J.