Encouraged by Christ’s Presence

Scripture Reflection for the Third Sunday of Easter (May 8, 2011)

Scripture Readings:
Acts 2:14, 22-33
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:17-21
Lk 24:13-35

A few weeks ago there was a meeting of a group of young people from the Focolare. During that event they present the life of Blessed Chiara Luce Badano to celebrate her beatification in September of last year. The event was preceded by long weeks of hard work, meetings, the visioning and re-visioning of the program, practices and rehearsals. The day of the event we had a dress rehearsal in the morning - and literally everything went wrong. People went on the stage from the wrong side; they didn’t know to whom to hand the microphone and the audio-visuals didn’t have audio… There was a lot of of frustration and fear. But then at 5:30 p.m., the actual program started. The hall was filled with about 300 high school youth and young adults, and it was amazing! The young people on stage were confident, joyful, convinced of their message and everything went smoothly. What happened? During the weeks of preparations deep relationships had been formed that grew beyond the differences of personalities and skills in planning the event. And they had learned how to love each other. There were moments of misunderstandings, situations of stress and frustration, but at the end love always had the last word and there was a growing sense of compassion and forgiveness among all. Our young people worked hard, but the outcome was so much bigger than any of our expectations, and the message was very convincing.

I thought of this experience when I read the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. It is the first proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, put in the mouth of Peter on the day of Pentecost. During Peter’s “dress rehearsal”, the night of Jesus’ condemnation, passion and death, everything went wrong for him. On that dramatic night, Peter fell asleep during Jesus’ last prayer, denied Jesus three times and even ran away at the moment of his crucifixion. But in this passage of Acts, Peter speaks up with courage, giving a convincing witness to Christ and his resurrection from the dead. How is this possible? Maybe we can find the answer in the Gospel reading.

On this Third Sunday of Easter we hear the famous story of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on their way to Emmaus. We don’t know for sure if the disciples have actually seen the Risen Lord physically or if it was a rather spiritual experience. What we know is that they were pretty confused and couldn’t make much sense of the events of the last few days. On their way they were probably discussing what went “wrong” with Jesus. The appearance of the risen Jesus changes everything. When Jesus starts to explain the Scriptures, they can finally understand their meaning. There is a new light and there is a sense of warmth, joy and fellowship while they were talking. But they still don’t recognize Jesus. Only when Jesus breaks the bread, something they have seen him doing so many times, they know “it is the Lord.”

Biblical scholars find that this story reflects the pattern of early Christian worship and it is not difficult to find parallels to our liturgies today: Christ makes himself present through the Scriptures and the Sacraments.

What is important is that Christ is present with the disciples and that his presence gives them light, joy, freedom and courage. We all can experience these effects of Christ’s presence in our lives. I hope that we have experienced something similar during the liturgies of the Triduum, for example. But Jesus has also promised his presence “where two or three are together in (his) name.” (Mt 18:20) Scholars generally agree that in “his name” means “in him”, “in his love.”

The experience of the presence of the Risen Lord made the apostles take courage and give witness to the Good News in front of the people in Jerusalem. The same presence of Jesus in our midst, through the practice of mutual love, made those young Focolare people overcome their fear and insecurity and be a living testimony to their faith and to an authentic Christian life in our times.

When we go to Church this Sunday, let us reflect on the mystery of Christ’s presence in our world today. He is with us through the Scriptures and present in the Eucharist. But he is also present wherever two or more love one another as he has loved us. May this renewed faith in the presence of the Risen Lord give us the courage to be authentic witnesses to Christ’s Gospel in this world, wherever we are.

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