“Stay with Us”: When Jesus Heals our Blindness!
Acts 2:14, 22-33; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35
They were blind! They had been blind! They shall always be blind, except with the opening of their hearts and minds. The blindness of the eyes is not our subject matter, but that of the heart and mind. With the eyes, we see the configuration of the world. Everything has its place. We navigate around objects to avoid accidents and collisions. Our power of differentiation comes to play; our creativity apportions values and importance to things. With a heart bereft of God, and a clouded mind—blindness remains. Only God takes away the blindness of the heart and mind. He did it for his disciples, through his Word. Today, he offers us the opportunity to be healed of the blindness of the heart and mind, and the fear of Covid-19, through his Words and presence.
The inability to grasp the spiritual, the non-material, is blindness. The eyes is limited in what it can see, because it is not meant to see everything—especially the invisible. The mind and heart help to complement what the eyes cannot see. The journey into the heart and mind is the message of our first reading. Peter opens the heart of his listeners: you are murderers, he convicts them. Your moral depravity took a life, Jesus’ life, he says. The pain of immorality is felt in the mind and heart. The crime and sin against morality is seen with the eyes, but only the mind and heart agonizes for it. The return of God into a heart and mind convicted of unbelief is the return of joy, trust and love. This is the relevance of the resurrection faith—the presence of the Lord in the heart and mind.
Without the resurrection faith, too much importance is attributed to death and the visible. Consequent upon the lack of faith, in the resurrection, is a paralyzing fear of death. Peter, in our first reading, addresses the problem of death. Peter declares “death” powerless before God: “God raised him up, releasing [Jesus] from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it”. The defeat of death is the rise and reign of life. To conquer death is to eliminate the fear of all fears. This is the source of the apostles’ courage—the readiness for a resurrection, should death occur.
Our gospel reading connects with our first reading on the problem of faith in the resurrection. The absence of Jesus and the ignorance of Scriptures haunted the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Their lives appear crashing like a stack of cards. The meaninglessness of life stares them in the eyes. They search for answers, an anchor on life’s promises. Their cry—“stay with us”—comes from a burning heart, because of the Word of God. Jesus opens the treasures of the Scriptures to them, not political and economic theories. The exclamation of “I see” is different from “I understand”. “I see” appeals to the eyes, “I understand” comes from the heart and mind. “I see” tickles the eyes, “I understand” accepts an inbuilt logic above what the eyes see—little wonder they their request: “stay with us”! When the heart and mind understand, the darkness of fear disappears. With a liberated heart and mind from unbelief, risk taking becomes normal, because the heart does not limit itself to what the eyes see. The best comes last: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
The incontestable message of Easter and Christianity is the Resurrection! Judaism lacks this message. Science does not conceive of it, because it is outside of its grasp and methods. The resurrection is both visible and invisible, tangible and intangible: Thomas touches Jesus, after his resurrection, and he feels blood, bones and flesh (John 20:24-29). Mary Magdalene too experiences same thing (John 20:18-19). Jesus eats food in the presence of his disciples, and prepares breakfast for them by the sea of Tiberias (John 21:12). Death did not triumph over life! Everything appears normal about Jesus, except that he appears to them only on Sundays, on the First Day of the Week—the resurrection day. The belief in the resurrection is the core of Christianity!
The journey back to Jerusalem the same night, by the same disciples who persuaded a stranger—“stay with us it is almost evening”—is comparable to our life journeys. We either journey in courage and joy or in fear and uncertainty. The disciples left Jerusalem with heavy hearts and blind minds, they return there in joy and with the good news of the inexplicable resurrection to share with others. What death seemed to have taken away returns to them—Jesus. The disciples, who were afraid of death and scared to death, sudden smile at death and the risk of dying. It was not their eye-sights that were restored—death still loomed about them. Their hearts and minds were healed—although they saw death around them, they embraced it because of the resurrection of Jesus-Christ. They saw death, but they understood life. While death threatened them, life made the threats of death empty—there is life after death, they believed.
Today, the doling out of economic stimulus by responsible governments assuages material needs. Money and material needs leave the blindness of the heart and mind intact. In fact, intelligent minds are already asking: whose money is being redistributed and who will repay it? Another question that comes to mind is: how long can we keep distributing money before we go bankrupt as nations and individuals? Our social distancing and self-isolation remain a big struggle despite our stimulus packages. Our desire to return to normalcy, whatever that normalcy means, fails to address what was normal about our normal times, and why this period is considered a-normal.
We all see Covid-19 and its ravages of human health and life, and we panic. We feel powerless against a virus that decimates us, our loved ones and ways of life, but do we understand why? Like the disciples of Jesus, we need to cry—“stay with us”. Not that the Lord is absent, but that we need to understand that he is there already. We need our spiritual blindness taken away, and our hearts refilled with joy and our minds full of understanding. Our material investments haunt us, because the ubiquity of death and the possibility of separation with the material keeps us sleepless. The link between the material and the spiritual is taken off the radar, so we are fearful.
“Stay with us” is a cry for help, that human beings cannot do without God. The “power” of death defies stimulus packages. The meaning of life is not designed in science laboratories. No human army can terrorize death. “Death” is the terrorist of a world oblivious of the presence of God; a humanity so arrogant that it fails to ask about its Creator. God’s answer to “stay with us” is his Word that burns in the hearts of his disciples as they listened to him speak, and the opening of their eyes at the breaking of the bread—the Eucharist.
“Stay with us” is the humility that reveals the need for God. It is a return to the sources, to the origins of the human person and the meaning of human life—God. The meaning of life, it has to realize, does not come from material wealth and military power. It is the presence of God that gives joy and understanding. The eyes that see the logic of creation, must understand the hidden meaning built into creation: only the mind and heart can discover this. To see beyond a simple wafer/bread is to experience the real presence of God in the Eucharist. To empty one’s heart and mind from material gods is to experience the presence of the Lord differently, when we read the Bible—God’s presence burns within us to give us joy, courage and peace.
“Stay with us” is the heart that is on fire because of the Word of God; the discovery that God alone is the source of human happiness. A liberated heart is one that stands up to death itself in its multiple forms: it laughs at death threats because it protests abortion laws, homosexuality, racism, homophobia, oppressions, and injustice in all its forms. With the presence of the Lord is the guidance that comes from the Law of the Lord, not human laws.
The more one amasses wealth and military power, the more distant God is from such a person and place: those are the signs of fear and the power of death. A heart on fire with the Word of God conquers death and becomes a living martyr, because death is a mirage, life is real and forever! At this point, blindness is gone and God is back—alleluia!
God Matters: When a Stranger becomes God
Luke 24:13-35
Our gospel reading today is multi-layered. We can read off hope in its narratives; deep fear is on its surface; joy and trust concludes the ordeals it narrates. It is, indeed, a gospel—good news—because of its happy ending. Its plot is very common place and routine. The admixture of fears, joys and laughters are human experiences that resonate with us all. But there is a difference in our gospel, it is a broken relationship, dashed hope, and dreams short-lived. It is not a déjà vu, it is a jamais vu—never seen before. Yet, not a fairytale, it is a reality. In our gospel today, a stranger becomes a family member—a God. The Word of God transforms a stranger into a prophet and a consoler. A meal reveals the identity of a stranger and partakers in the meal rediscover their relationship, which fear had taken away from them.
Fear grips Jesus’ disciples! Different people react to fear differently. In every reaction to fear are risks, because it is not rational and well coordinated. “Reaction” is like a drowning person’s efforts to keep alive, anything and everything becomes an anchor. But coping with fear is a return to one’s roots to find tools with which to confront fear. In the context of our gospel, hospitality to a stranger, a Christian cardinal virtue, helps the disciples on the road to Emmaus to cope with their fear. They were ready to listen to a fellow traveler along their path. Journey becomes an opportunity to develop friendship with a stranger, with an expectation of sharing sorrows together. Rather, the stranger has a different take on issues. He takes the disciples back to their roots, a return to their faith formation—the Bible.
The road to Emmaus is the journey of life. No one journeys alone, except when one chooses to be alone—an individual. The other person on our path in life, may be the only person whose perspectives would change the course of our journey. This unknown person or stranger, may be the God on our path. In biblical terms, strangers are mostly angels or those God sends to us to help us weather the storms of life. They only appear, when we are in need—barrenness, sadness, poverty, ill-health, in prison, lonely, afraid, etc. They make outlandish proposals, they talk about el dorados. We need more than intelligence to understand them—we need faith, in fact, God himself.
On the road to Emmaus, the effect of words in the heart is the start of a new experience. A stranger’s words awaken something deep down. There is curiosity and enlargement of appetite for more. It is not a new tale, but a familiar one—foundation story, told as if already heard before in other contexts. There is gratitude on the part of the disciples, for the encouraging words offered and received. Their Christian hospitality pushes them to offer their traveling companion an accommodation for the night, perhaps some supper to eat as well—their turn to offer arguments of encouragements and persuasion to get the stranger to stay the night with them—“the day is far spent,” they said. At this point, he is no longer a stranger, his words make traveling easier and lighter. Well, only family and friends share meals together. The apparent stranger takes the head of the table, in a familiar fashion. He breaks bread and gives to them. The deed is done, and he vanishes from their eyes—it is the Lord!
The journey to Emmaus comes to an abrupt end. When the disciples thought that they had returned home, that they had arrived at their comfort zone, a new journey started. There is always the unexpected part, when one travels with God. Human destinations are not usually God’s. The fear that made the disciples to abandon Jerusalem to head home or to search for a comfort zone has a surprise in store for them. Their comfort zone is actually their starting point. They abandoned the same comfort zone in order to seek out Jesus. In fear and despair, a homeward journey seemed inevitable. It is now time to return to Jerusalem—a sequel of beginnings!
Memory is very important—it stores up our experiences. Only one person speaks and inflames the heart that way! One person alone breaks bread this way—Jesus. Appearance, disappearance and reappearance are the trademarks of Jesus. Now it adds up: Jesus is risen from the dead, they concluded. Now, a new beginning of a long-night journey; a return to Jerusalem. With joyful hearts, forgetful of the fear that lurks in the night, the disciples abandon their comfort zone, their home, once more. The death of Christ took place in Jerusalem, they return their anyway, ready for whatever Jerusalem holds in store for them—even death!
Every real and authentic encounter with God in his Word and Eucharist are dynamic. The explosion of a dynamite takes out the obstacles that obstruct the attainment of the treasure we seek. With bobbling joy in their hearts, they shared the good news of the resurrection with fellow disciples. They retell the story of their encounter with the risen Lord. Their hope is back, and their lives back on track. Jerusalem becomes their new home, no intentions to return to their old home. Indeed, when the going gets tough, Jesus comes to journey with disciples to get them going. By remembering their roots, the stranger they thought was a companion on their way becomes a family—their Savior, Jesus-Christ.
This is how hope works. When troubles come our way, we need to lean on our faith. Like the human memory, the Bible documents our faith, our origins. The Word of God remains a powerful dynamite to break open all that hinders us from seeing God, even in a stranger. Every Eucharistic table has a head—Jesus-Christ himself. We must see in this unknown presider at the Eucharist, the Jesus who travels with us. In our spiritual communion, our hearts must burn from the Word of God broken for us. If the Lord is Spirit as well, who appears, disappears and reappears, then he can come into us spiritually. Yes, he does come to us, but can we make him a family not a stranger?