3rd Sunday of Easter 2017 - Word and Sacrament on the Road to Emmaus

In a homily on the Emmaus story a few years ago, the holy Father, Pope Benedict, spoke about conversion.

“The Gospel of the Third Sunday of Easter — which we have just heard — presents the episode of the disciples of Emmaus, an account that never ceases to astonish and move us,” the Holy Father said. 

“This episode shows the effects that the Risen Jesus works in two disciples: conversion from despair to hope; conversion from sorrow to joy; and also conversion to community life.”

Conversion. There is an important word in the Christian life. Generally, conversion means any sort of change. Converting dollars to pesos, metric to standard. In the religious sense, we can speak of converting from one religion to another. St. Paul, for example, converts from being an unbeliever and persecutor of Christianity to one of the greatest and most heroic evangelizers of history. At Easter this year, here at St. Clare, 5 people from different faith traditions: Baptist, United Church of Christ, Methodist, and Presbyterian converted to Roman Catholicism.

In mathematics, converting from one type of unit to another is simple, if you know the formula. Moral conversion and religious conversion are not so easy, and rely heavily on the grace of God. Our 5 converts spent months undergoing formal training in the faith, and many of them would speak of how their journey to the faith took many different twists and turns throughout their lives.  Moral conversion requires more than intellectual training, converting from selfishness to generosity is not so easy. We have to break habits of the mind, renounce selfish ways, and make real effort to be more generous.

And Pope Benedict is saying that the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus is the story of conversion. In their conversion they came to a deeper understanding and joy in the risen Christ and love for him.  This is a conversion that the Lord wants for each one of us. To deepen our understanding, to deepen our faith, and to deepen our love.

For the life of the Christian isn’t simply about a one-time conversion at baptism, and then we are guaranteed of heaven. The life of the Christian is a journey of continued conversion: not just from unbelief to belief, not just from evil to good, but from good to better. Hopefully Easter 2017 finds you holier, more prayerful, walking more reverently, utilizing the gifts of the Holy Spirit more than you did a year ago. If not, what happened?

Well, whatever happened, Our Lord extends today the invitation to begin to walk again in the way of daily conversion.

Pope Benedict continued his homily, explaining what is necessary for the daily conversion of the Christian life. He says, “It is thus necessary for each and every one of us to let ourselves be taught by Jesus, as the two disciples of Emmaus were: first of all by listening to and loving the word of God read in the light of the Paschal Mystery, so that it may warm our hearts and illumine our minds helping us to interpret the events of life and give them meaning. Then it is necessary to sit at table with the Lord, to share the banquet with him, so that his humble presence in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood may restore to us the gaze of faith, in order to see everything and everyone with God’s eyes, in the light of his love. Staying with Jesus who has stayed with us, assimilating his lifestyle, choosing with him the logic of communion with each other, of solidarity and of sharing. The Eucharist is the maximum expression of the gift which Jesus makes of himself and is a constant invitation to live our lives in the Eucharistic logic, as a gift to God and to others.”

Did you catch the two necessary practices for ongoing conversion? Listening to and loving the word of God, and valuing more deeply the gift of the Eucharist.

A little less than a year ago, we were reflecting on the story of Martha and Mary, how Mary sat at the Master’s feet and listened to him and cherished him. And I think it was at this Mass, in which I presented a challenge…a 10-minute-a-day challenge. Not turning on the television, not doing the household chores, until you’ve spent 10 minutes reading and reflecting upon the Scriptures. I wonder if anyone took me up on that.

The scriptures help our hearts to be “warmed and illumined” as Pope Benedict said.  They help us “interpret the events of our life”. Have you ever been reading the Scriptures and discovered that it was as if they were written just for you? I hope so. If not, I encourage you to do a little more reading.

So the first necessary practice is listening and loving the word of God, the second is cherishing the Eucharist more deeply, allowing its power to becoming unleashed in your life. The Pope used a really neat phrase, he said when we accept the gift Jesus makes to us in the Eucharist, our lives begin to take on a “Eucharistic Logic”.

In the Eucharist, Jesus is offered to the Father, broken, shared, and poured out. And when we allow the Eucharist to convert us, our lives begin to take on the same logic, the same pattern: we allow ourselves to be broken, poured out, and shared for others. Our life becomes a “living sacrifice to the Father”.

When we truly begin to take seriously this call to listen and love the Word of God and to cherish the Eucharist we begin to experience profound conversion: conversion from despair to hope; conversion from sorrow to joy; and also conversion to become more involved in service in the life of the community, such as the ways being presented in today’s Ministry fair down in the gym.

May we accept the invitation the Lord makes to us today, to grow in grace, to allow him to shape and transform our lives through Word and Sacrament for the glory of God and salvation of souls.