Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 9:35 - 10:23

I think when we hear Jesus ask us to pray for laborers for the harvest, many of us believe we are praying for vocations to the priesthood and religious life.  But notice that the apostles who were sent out by Jesus were not yet by any measure, clergy.  They had not participated in the Last Supper, yet, and received the order to “Do this in memory of me.”  They had not had the risen Jesus breathe on them and give them the power to forgive sins.  They had not yet been ordered to baptize all nations , which would only come about at the time of Jesus’ ascension.  They weren’t priests or bishops.  They were laymen, and fairly uneducated as well.  You didn’t need to know how to read and write in those days.  There were scribes for that.  So Jesus sends out twelve uneducated laymen to proclaim the kingdom of heaven.  And they do, and look at us now, one fifth of the world’s population are at least nominally Christian.

One of the good things that seems to be happening in our time is the fact that lay poeo[ple are stepping up to the plate in terms of evangelization.  There are several prominent writers and apologists, andI’m sure you’ve heard of Scott Hahn, Edward Sri,Jimmy Akin, Karl Keating.  And lay evangelists aren’t limited to men; Theresa Tomeo, Sherry Weddell, and Lila Rose are just three names of women who are Catholic evangelists.  

But despite these signs of hope, we can’t escape the fact that parts of the world where Catholicism was once very strong now see a sad attrition of faithful Catholics -- Western Massachusetts, for example.  And I think today’s gospel should be a call to all of us to become laborers for the harvest.  

Jesus even tells us what to do.  We are to proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  We do this by our deeds, we cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons.  He gave his disciples the power to do so, and Isuspect he gives us the power as well, if we want to use it.  There have been saints, even in fairly recent times, who have done deeds like these.  And when those deeds are witnessed, people come into the church, and people with lukewarm faith become more fervent.  

So where do we start?  We have to start from the beginning.  You can’t hope to cure the sick unless you go to the sick.  All of us know someone who is sick -- maybe chronically ill, maybe recovering from surgery.  But how do we bring the presence of Christ to them?  Christ lives in you and I and that’s what we have to remember.  We are all tabernacles and just as we come into the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, even though we know we can approach God from anywhere, I Can bring Christ to people by visiting them, by simply being present to them.  

Raising the dead is a bigger challenge.  Being dead means that you are no longer able to change without a seeming miracle.  People who are severe alcoholics or drug or gambling addicts, for example.  If we know people like this, sometimes all we can do is pray for them, but it doesn’t hurt to work on the bonds we have with them, to strengthen their reason to change.  

Cleansing lepers is also something we can do.  Lepers are people at the margins, people who are by reason of race or sexual orientation or challenged mentally or physically, or people who are bullied.  They are people who are rejected by society.  To cleanse these lepers means to invite them back into our circle, even if it means that we step outside of it to do so.  

Finally, driving out demons is something the Lord calls his disciples to do.  I don’t deny that there really are demons.  But most people affected by demons are not really possessed, but rather, they are oppressed.  I know a lady who is absolutely convinced that she can’t be forgiven her sins; She’s been to confession several times, has worked with a counselor on more than one occasion, and she can’t even name the sin she thinks she is guilty of.  She’s miserable.  It’s hard to tell if she is oppressed by a demonic force or if she has some mental illness.  But to have malignant obsessive thoughts ruining your life certainly seems demonic.  And Jesus gives his church  the power to drive out demons.  Maybe it is up to us disciples to try to get people like this at least evaluated.  

When I was growing up I knew a priest who taught at our local Catholic college.  Many evenings he would quietly disappear to sit in a bar and talk with the patrons.  We didn’t know this until his funeral, when the stories came out about the lives he changed by being present, by being non-judgemental, and simply by quietly being there to listen.  What he was doing, anyone could do, you don’t need Holy Orders.  

Corpus Christi, 2023

John 6:51 - 58

Last Thursday I met a lady who is 102 years old. Her doctor sent her to rehabilitation because she thought it would help her continue to be independent for a few more years. She was getting to the point where she couldn’t walk very well. She lives alone but has a couple of friends who drop in once in a while. She had six children and is looking forward to a reunion with the three who are already in the next life. She told me she can’t wait to get to heaven and can’t see the point of prolonging her life. At the same time she’s happy and cheerful and interested in current events. Her mind is sharp and her body works pretty well. In our conversation she told me that she misses Sunday mass, because she can’t get there anymore. So she watches it on television. She says the rosary every day. When I asked her where she gets the strength to keep on going, she smiled and pointed up to heaven. I asked her whether she was on the list to receive the Eucharist, because some wonderful volunteers from our parish go to the nursing home every week to bring the Eucharist to Catholics there. She lit up and told me she had been wanting to receive it since before Covid -- she stopped going to church about that time. I asked her what the Eucharist meant to her and she replied that it was like going to heaven. And when I thought about it, she had a point.

If we think about our first parents, Adam and Eve, before original sin we hear about them having a certain intimacy with God. God told Adam to name the animals and to tend the garden. He created Eve from Adam’s body because he recognized Adam’s loneliness. He gave Adam and Eve all they needed to know to enjoy paradise, and probably a time would have come when human beings would live out their lives in joyful, painless toil, caring for the garden, and then enter heaven-- without dying. Children would be born without pain or discomfort and continue God’s command to “fill the earth and subdue it”. Some of the early church fathers recognized this and because they saw Mary as untouched to original sin, called the end of her earthly life a Dormition, or falling asleep, rather than death.

Jesus was sent to begin the process of restoring the human race to what God had originally intended. As he told Philip, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father”. And elsewhere, “the words I speak to you I do not speak on my own; the Father who dwells in me is doing his works.” So when we see how Jesus goes about dealing with those around him, we can glimpse something about this plan.

First, Jesus chooses the Apostles. We don’t know why he picked them, especially Judas. But maybe he picked these very ordinary men to show us that everyone is invited. And he picks you and I. When we are baptized we are invited into this great mystery, to become children of the Father, like Jesus himself. Like Judas, we can turn down the invitation. You can’t love unless you are free to love or not love.

Second, Jesus teaches the apostles. We see in the scriptures that this was not easy. They misunderstand him over and over again, and they almost desert him for good in the end. Jesus teaches you and I through the scriptures and the Church. We don’t understand everything either, and frequently get mixed up in our thinking, because the world is always trying to separate us from God by confusing us, for one thing. In this month of the Sacred Heart, we are being told by our society to celebrate all those brave souls who are unhappy with the sexual identity God gave them. And being human, we feel for them, those with same sex attraction, those who feel they’ve been born in the wrong body. And we don’t understand. And our missionaries, once proudly bringing Christ to people who hadn’t heard the good news, are now out there tending to material needs -- a good thing -- and leaving the indigenous people to follow their own ways instead of entering into the Christian family. And we feel ambiguous -- Christianity will always alter a culture, and for some, that’s a terrible thing. Being taught by Jesus is a life-long effort.

Disciples in Jesus’ time not only learned from the Master, but waited on his needs and tried to imitate his behavior and mannerisms. They were, in a sense, servants. Jesus elevates his disciples to friends --” you are no longer servants, but friends, because I have told you everything the Father has spoken to me”. And The Father seeks our friendship as well -- he desires to make us like himself, as he did Jesus.

Holy Communion is the deepest form of friendship God gives us in this life. We literally become one with Jesus, who lives on in the sacrament. Holy communion is also the taste of the heavenly banquet to which we’ve been invited. And in Holy Communion, like the Blessed Mother, we have the privilege of bearing Christ, literally, in our bodies, if only for a short while. Holy Communion also unites us with all those saints down through the ages, with our parents and grandparents, and with each other, because there is only one Jesus Christ.

The second Vatican Council called the Eucharist the source and summit of Christian life. When the bread and wine are transformed by the Holy Spirit into the Body and Blood of Jesus, everything begins again; and when we receive his flesh and blood into our own, we approach and indeed, taste heaven.

Trinity Sunday, 2023

John 3:16 - 18

There have been many attempts at explaining the Trinity.  I’ve even tried to do so a few times myself.  I’m convinced it can’t be done.  If you say the Trinity is one God acting in three different ways, as Creator, redeemer, and Sanctifier, for example, you are committing the heresy of modalism.  If you say that the Trinity is comparable to a shamrock with three leaves that remains one plant, that’s the heresy of partialism - the idea that the three persons together make up the one God.  If you believe that the three persons are independent of each other, then you are a trietheist.  So is the best thing not to think about the Trinity at all?

Well, obviously the Church does not think so.  We have a whole Sunday devoted to this mystery.  So I’ve given up hope of objectively understanding the mystery.  But I think the Gospel tells us something about how we fit into it.  

God (the Father) loves the world.  The world is everything that is, everything that he thinks about, because God holds it in existence.  Everything owes its existence to God’s sustaining power, which is tied up in love.  But here is the surprise.  God causes everything to exist, but does this with overwhelming love, and desires to fold everything into himself.  As Jesus said, and he only says what the Father tells him, “If I am lifted up, I will draw all things to myself”.  Or as Saint Paul says, “the whole of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time”.  Why? Because all of creation awaits redemption --which means to be taken up by God into himself.  And that is why God gave us the Son, his Son.  By becoming part of creation, the Son now makes it possible that creation, including we human beings, be redeemed, be taken up into the heart of the trinity.  

But God in his love for us leaves us with the final say.  Whoever believes in him will not be condemned.  And that is the critical part for you and I.  What does it mean to believe in Him?  It’s more than just to admit to a fact.  How do we understand this?  Well, this gospel comes from a larger section in which Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus his mission.  Right before what you hear, Jesus refers to something in the Old Testament, when the Israelites became angry with God over the food he had given them.  God then allowed serpents to infest the camp and many died from their bites. One scholar said that the serpents were always there, God just removed his protection. When they came to Moses in repentance, he was told to make a bronze image of a serpent and place it on a pole.  If you got bitten, you had to look at the image in order to be cured.  What did all this mean? For God to work his miracle of healing, he demanded an action which showed that the repentant person had faith. 

That’s what Jesus is talking about.  Believing in him means doing something because of that belief, however small. What do we really do because we believe in him?  If I don’t steal, is it because that’s God’s commandment or because I don’t want the consequences of getting caught?  To believe in Jesus means that we have to resemble Jesus in the way we live.  In his time and down through the years, if you were the disciple of a teacher, you were expected to be recognizable, which meant that you took on the mannerisms of the teacher, even to wearing the same kind of clothing, in addition to learning and practicing what the teacher taught.  

So the Father loves the Son -- Saint Thomas says it’s because the Son is God and as such is completely loveable.  And the Son loves the Father and offers himself and the  world of which he has become a part out of love.  And this connection between the World and the Son is created by the Holy Spirit, who caused Jesus to be formed in Mary’s womb and who acts to transform bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity ol Jesus at every Mass.  

And we who believe in him become part of this Trinitarian mystery.  

Imagine a family which consists of the parents and their biological son, and several adopted children.  The Son, the oldest, takes all that he has and buys an elaborate gift for his parents out of his love for them.  Before he gives the gift, he invites his adopted brothers and sisters to sign the card and thus be part of the givers of the gift.  Some do, some don’t.  That’s something like the invitation we have today, to believe in the Son.  

So on this Trinity Sunday let’s think about the wonderful invitation God gives us -- to join in the gift the Son gives to the Father, by believing in him, by imitating him, by looking like him.  And let us ask the Holy Spirit to do to us what he did to Mary and form us into other Christs.  

Fifth Sunday of Easter, cycle A

 John 14:1-12

If you read the news, it’s hard to get through a day without something new to worry about. It’s not just climate change or a nuclear war or a humanity threatening plague anymore. Now we worry about artificial intelligence taking over the world. If there will even be a world. There’s some new activity going on in the sun that might destroy our complex civilization that relies on satellites and electronic communication. And worse yet, it appears that the earth is rotating faster than it used to, which might set off planet busting earthquakes. But it’s silly to worry about these things. Of course disaster is something that will touch most of us sooner or later -- The people in Ukraine, the people in Sudan, were living normal lives not too long ago. And disaster can be closer and even more personal. The diagnosis of a terminal disease; a major accident that leaves you with six months of rehabilitation. And even when we worry about these things, it doesn't seem to help. Jesus today gives us and his apostles an answer to worry.

First he tells us that he is going to prepare a place for us, and once that is ready, he’ll come back for us. We can take comfort in that promise. How many martyrs went to their deaths comforted by that promise? I meet a lot of people not too far from death when I visit hospitals and nursing home. It’s truly remarkable the difference faith in Jesus makes. It isn’t that people without faith are frightened, because most aren’t. But they are resigned; they have nothing to look forward to. In contrast, it raises my spirits when I meet someone who is positively looking forward to the next life. Jesus’ words, “Let your hearts not be troubled…” are truly comforting.

Second, Jesus tells us something we need to know -- he is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus tells us no one comes to the father except through him. Those of us with friends and relatives who are not Christian or who have broken away from Christianity rightfully worry about them. But we shouldn’t worry too much, just enough to remember them in prayer. The best thing we can do is to live a Christian life -- participate in the sacraments, have a prayer life, treat other people the way we would like to be treated -- and one thing a lot of us don’t do, is try to develop a mind formed by the church. We Catholics keep coming back to Mass because there is something about our faith that draws us, that calls out to us. But how much better would things be for us and for our friends and neighbors if we made an effort to understand what the Church teaches and why she teaches it, and how it relates to the teachings of Christ. This is the way, this is the truth, this leads us to everlasting life. And as we become more and more in tune with the teachings of the church, we become better witnesses to those who have not yet been blessed with the graces we have been given. Jesus is the way, the Church is his bride and his body, entrusted with re presenting him down through the ages in word and in the Holy Eucharist.

Third, Jesus reveals the Father to us. In the Old Testament, after the fall of our first parents, you keep coming across the idea that no one can see God and live. When God has any interaction with human beings, it’s mysterious, like visions and dreams; or it’s overwhelming, like the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire that lead the Israelites through the desert. In the Garden of Eden God and Adam spoke together like friends. Jesus in today’s gospel tells Philip that if you have seen him, you’ve seen the Father; and if you have heard him, those are the words of the Father. And if you still don’t get it, look at what Jesus has done -- walked on water, driven out demons, healed the sick, raised the dead, a long list -- but things that only God can do. Granted, others have worked miracles. But none claimed to be the source of the miracles, as Jesus did.

So with these assurances, Jesus tells us not to let our hearts be troubled. And perhaps we should ask on this fifth Sunday after celebrating his victory over sin and death, whether we are troubled? Because being troubled may be a sign that our faith needs some shoring up. And we can say that surrender prayer, Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything.

Fourth Sunday of Easter, cycle A

John 10:1-10

When I was a teenager I worked in a grocery store in my home town in Montana.  I was a “box boy”, which meant that I packed groceries and carried them out to the customer’s car.  We didn’t have plastic bags or reusable bags, just boxes that had once held canned goods and paper bags.  My average weekly salary was 12:50.  

There were shepherds in the hills around my hometown.  Many of them had emigrated from Basque country in Spain.  They  lived in wooden covered wagons that could be pulled from meadow to meadow.  They were hired hands, and I doubt that there were any shepherds who owned the sheep they took care of.  And I have to say, they smelled like their sheep.  They would come down to the grocery store about once a month to stock up on flour and sugar and canned goods, and I suspect they stopped at a liquor store before returning to their jobs.  And they lived very solitary lives.

The whole tenth chapter of John compares Jesus to a shepherd, or as you see in this gospel, a sheep gate.  Shepherds in Palestine would gather their sheep together and herd them into a box canyon or other enclosure for the night.  The shepherds would take turns guarding the sheep; the one doing the guarding was the gate for the sheep.  Now if Jesus is the shepherd, we are the sheep.  There are three things that we and sheep have in common.

First, we and sheep like to gather together.  We are herd animals, so are they.  There are obvious advantages to living in groups and our whole civilization could not exist if we didn’t have an instinct for seeking out the company of each other.  And that’s why Jesus founded his church.  He started out with the apostles, gathered together many more disciples, and after his death and resurrection, we can read in the Acts of the apostles how those first Christians lived.  It says they held everything in common, and those who owned property would sell what they owned and lay the proceeds at the feet of the apostles.  And very soon the apostles began to divide up the labor needed to take care of their flock -- they appointed deacons. It seemed as though in those first days of the church converts were being admitted in overwhelming numbers.  The church is where we can gather together, where we can enjoy the company of each other, where we can look around and see fellow Christians.  At every weekend liturgy we should feel at least a little solidarity with our fellow Catholics.

The second thing sheep and us have in common is that we can distinguish our master’s voice.  When sheep were kept together overnight, in the morning the shepherds would call their flocks, who would recognize their voices and sort themselves out.  Now this is a concept that has fallen by the wayside, but in the early days of the Church, and even into the middle ages it was recognized that there was something they called “sensuum fidei”  , the sense of the faithful.  If you are a baptized Christian free of mortal sin, you have the ability to recognize authentic teachings and reject those that aren’t authentic.  Of course to be faithful means to be educated in our faith, then we are able to recognize when something doesn't fit.  I think of the time when there was a claimant to the papal throne in Avignon, one in Rome, and a third who had been selected as a compromise. The people weren’t having any of it, and prompted by Catherine of Sienna and others, decided which pope they would follow.  And of course every time there is a martyr it’s because that person had a sense of what was true and what was false.  We can tell when our master is speaking.

The third thing is that sheep and humans like to  follow a leader.  Cattle need to be driven, with dogs and whips and loud noises.  If you do this to sheep, they scatter, and it’s hard getting them back together.  Sheep follow their shepherd because they have experienced his leadership in the past -- as it says in the psalm, “in green pastures he makes me lie down, by restful waters he leads me.”  the shepherd earns the trust of the sheep.  We humans will follow a leader who has earned our trust.  

ON Good Shepherd Sunday it's worth reflecting on this shepherd that we are following; we are saved, not by ourselves, but in our community.  We need to gather together so that Christ will be present-- he said that’s how to do it.  We can’t be “spiritual but not religious”.  Our very nature makes us gather.  Our shepherd teaches us.  The Church, His bride, has two thousand years of experience in applying his message to the current times, the current situations.  We have bishops who were ordained by other bishops, all the way back to the apostles, who are our teachers.  And we have our shepherd who has proven himself trustworthy -- after all he has conquered death for us and intercedes for us with the Father.

Some people think sheep are stupid.  But stupid sheep wander off and get in trouble.  Smart ones stay near the shepherd.  It’s true of us as well.  

Second Sunday of Easter, cycle A

John 20:19-31

Every year on the second Sunday of the Easter Season, the Sunday we now call Mercy Sunday, we hear the story of Saint Thomas the Apostle, who will be known for all ages as “doubting Thomas”.  And the implication is that it’s wrong to doubt, or at least a sign of weakness.  Great Saints don’t doubt, do they?  When we read about their lives they always seem to have such certainty.  Those martyrs knew that after a brief moment in time they would be forever in heaven with Jesus.  They went to their deaths singing hymns.  

There was one martyr -- I'm sure more than one, but this one I read about many years ago. All we know about this Chinese layman was that during the persecutions of Christians during the 19th century, he and many of his fellow Christians were taken before a magistrate and given the choice -- either renounce Christianity or be strangled.  A few of them did; the rest held fast.  And as they were strangled one by one, one of those who had renounced the faith stepped forward and said that he could not renounce his faith, not really.  And he went on to be strangled to death.  

We know that this man, declared a saint by John Paul II, doubted.  And unless there was some sort of miracle, his doubt before and after his decision was probably not changed.  But what happened was that in spite of his doubt he acted on his faith.  

I think that’s the most beautiful kind of faith, the faith that springs from the edges of doubt. The faith that is the result of conscious decision in which I say, honestly, I cannot say whether I truly believe in this or that truth, but I am going to live as though it is true, and not look back, even if it costs me my life.  The theologian Paul Tillich said that doubt is not the opposite of true faith; it is a component.  Because if you do not recognize the doubt at the edges of your faith, it isn’t really faith that you have, it’s certainty, and certainly requires no struggle, no commitment.  If I know that something is inevitable I can’t do anything about it.  If I learn that the Russians are about to bomb Longmeadow, I can run but I can’t hide.  If I know (I am going to heaven, like some of our protestant brothers and sisters know, what effort do I need to make?  My salvation is assured.  And that’s even an attraction of atheism; if I am certain that there is no god, no afterlife, then what do I really need to do?  Do I need to work for a better future, for peace in the world, for the end to the slaughter of unborn babies?  For an atheist, nothing really matters because there is no ultimate concern.  

So real faith has to have doubt around the edges, because real faith leads us more deeply into the mystery of our ultimate concern, the mystery of our relationship with God.  Real faith means that we are pushing forward, committing ourselves, and we do this despite doubt.  

Thomas’ real fault was not that he doubted, but that he demanded certainty.  “I will not believe,” he said, unless I put my fingers in the wounds of his hands and my hand in his side.”  I must have certainty, as certain about the resurrection as I am that two and two are four, then I will believe.``  

But there is another important lesson we can learn from this gospel passage.  It is that faith is meant to be spread by the witness of those who have faith.  Thomas was supposed to believe because his brother apostles claimed to have witnessed something.  It’s true that Jesus forgave Thomas just as he had forgiven Peter and the others for their betrayal and desertion, just as he forgives us for our failures.  But notice that Jesus does not commend Thomas for his doubt.  He tells him, “You believe because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen, but have believed.”  Thomas does not receive the blessing that Jesus offers you and I, who have not seen but believe.

If you read the stories of the patriarchs, of Moses, of King David, you meet people who are friends of God, to the point of being able to speak with him.  And they have faith of course, but they have doubts about God keeping his promises.  And God never rejects them.  He continues to do what he says he will do.  So don’t deny your doubts.  Recognize them.  And then you can grow.  And remember that faith is spread by those who have faith.  This means that we have to practice the act of belonging - to our faith community, to our professional association, to our service organization.  Because how else can our associates know about Christ?  We also must practice humility and respect.  We have to constantly remind ourselves that the people we interact with are the very people Jesus died for, that God made in his image.  And we have to practice conversation and polite disagreement.  Conversation only with those who agree doesn’t help much.  And conversation that does not respect the honest differences of opinion will not bring anyone closer to Christ.

So today let’s recommit ourselves to being missionaries, and let us look at our doubts as  opportunities to deepen our faith, to point us to the commitment God calls us to make.  

Third Sunday of Easter, cycle A

Luke 24:13-35

The gospel story you have just heard is one that resonates with most of us.  You have two disciples -- I like to think they are a married couple.  In Matthew there is a reference to a Mary, the wife of Clopas, which is close enough to Cleopas mentioned in this story.  It says they are disciples.  They’ve been part of the Jesus movement, they’ve witnessed his miracles, they’ve heard him teach, they have been captured by his charisma, enough so that they do whatever they can to be near him, to follow in his footsteps.  And then this miracle worker, this man who seems to be the Messiah every one is expecting, is suddenly condemned and put to death, by the Romans, but with the full compliance of the Jewish authorities.  

I think most of us on our faith journey go through periods where we wonder if it's all a myth, whether I’m wasting my time.  The death of the Messiah is sort of like the priests who are found to have abused children, the seeming crimes church leaders have committed against indigenous people -- and every time they take a poll they find fewer and fewer people believe or even want to believe.  Some countries which were bastions of Christianity now have maybe ten percent of their populations who are active Christians, and in some of these countries, the number of active Muslims will soon overwhelm the Christians.  They have put our Messiah to death. 

But it’s not the first time.  When you read about saints, one characteristic you see over and over again is that they are reformers.  You have popes who reformed, you have saints who have reformed popes.  You have heresies that nearly wiped out orthodox Christianity.  The whole history of Christianity is one of seeming failure followed by reform and rebuilding.  And we shouldn’t be surprised; it’s the story of the Old Testament as well.  

Notice that our disciples are going over the things that are happening, that have happened, the reasons for their loss of hope.  And into this steps Jesus, who tells them that all this was predicted, it was there in the word of God.  And Jesus to them is a stranger at this point.  But they will recall later that their hearts were “burning within them” when he opened the scriptures.  Did your heart ever “burn” within you?  I think we’ve all had the experience of suddenly understanding something that used to be mysterious.  It happens a lot on college campuses and when people learn a trade.  And it happens when you sit down seriously with scripture, listening for God to speak to you.  As the Emmaus disciples were to learn, when our hearts burn within us, the Lord is close. 

Finally Jesus reveals himself in the breaking of the bread.  Notice the structure.  Doesn’t this remind you of the Mass?  You hear the scriptures, you have them explained, and you participate in the breaking of the bread, and Jesus becomes present.  We reenact Emmaus every time we attend our liturgy.  And of course when Jesus is no longer present, the disciples find themselves on mission.  They are no longer afraid, they realize that if  someone is going to announce to the world this remarkable fact, this resurrection from the dead of the Messiah, it will be them.  So they get up and rush back to the apostles to tell them what they experienced.  Kind of like we are supposed to do once we’ve encountered the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread during our Mass.  

Is the church failing in its mission?  By almost any measurement, it is -- in some parts of the world, while in others the Church is doing quite well.  But where it is failing, that’s our fault, we are the Church, we have a treasure to share with the world, we have the assurance of Jesus himself that if we speak up he will speak for us before the Father; but if we deny him, he will deny us.  And we deny him when we keep silent.  I”m old enough to remember a time -- after Vatican II, when our country was inflamed with religious fervor, among Catholics as well as Protestants and Jews. We had all caught fire; there was the Charismatic movement; there was the founding of small colleges and other educational institutions under the Christian banner.  There were evangelists on television on Sunday morning, people who had a wide following as they talked about the Gospel.  And it wasn’t the first time.  When I was growing up there was Bishop Sheen, who commanded a huge television audience of people of all denominations.  I met a rabbi once who said he attributed his vocation to watching Bishop Sheen, not because he agreed with him, but the enthusiasm of the Bishop for his faith rubbed off on him.  And there were other times when faith would flare up.  It’s time it happened again.  And like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is there to help us if we leave this supper and tell the world of our own experience.