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.
