Christ is Risen, Alleluia Alleluia!

Easter may seem early this year, but we have still journeyed through lent to get to this most important Christian Feast. As st Paul says, If Christ is not risen our faith is in vain. For two thousand years now we have been celebrating Christ's triumph over death. He has appeared to countless disciples! Yesterday and earlier this morning we heard the Gospels witness the encounter of the risen Lord with Mary Magdalene, now we have heard another encounter with the risen Lord with the Two disciple walking to Emmaus. Christ is alive! Christ is Risen, but the question remains 'Have we encountered the Lord?'

Doesn't being A Christian mean some how that we have met the risen Christ, that we live now not just for him but With Him?

In todays Gospel we see two disciples on a journey, a man joins them, they do not recognize him but they welcome him. The stranger inquires of them why they seem so sad. And they ask 'have you not heard what they did to Jesus the Nazarene? A prophet mighty in in deeds and word!'

And then this stranger explains the Scriptures to them starting with Moses and all the prophets.

He asks: "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his Glory?"

So well did this man interpret the scriptures for them that their hearts were burning within them, yet they still did not recognize Jesus who was speaking to them.

Isn't our faith sometimes like this? We try living with Christian values, with Christian ideals, and yet we still often do not recognize Christ who is among us.

Unfortunately we as Christians often do not know our sacred Story, and so we do not know who we are.

Questions of who am I, where do I come from, why am I the way I am are Fundamental and existential questions!
We need to ask this about our Christian identity too. We can not be cut off from our sacred past. Cardinal Ouellete of Quebec has often spoken to the youth telling them you must know your heritage to know who you are, and who you are called to be.

During the Easter Vigil after reading many passages of sacred scripture, our story of salvation, we welcomed 11 people into the faith of the church, baptizing four of them, confirming nine of them and welcoming two by profession of faith. It was a beautiful celebration of our Faith, it was a celebration of the light of the risen Christ we had come to encounter.

Like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus we journeyed with Christ, and he enlightened our hearts which were burning because we new who we were before our God. Christ has conquered death and like the Disciples at Emmaus we invited him to stay with us; and we welcomed him in the breaking of the Bread.

Jesus gives us complete freedom to invite him into our lives, to be Children in the Risen Son. Like the disciple at Emmaus we must not miss our chance to invite him to stay with us. Lucky for us Jesus, as he seemed to take leave of the two disciples, he hesitates long enough for them to call out to him. Jesus is always waiting for us to call out to him.

We have the name if Christian, but what does this mean? It means that our hearts should be burning within at our encounter with the risen Lord. But this can only happen if we come to recognize him. Like the disciples of Emmaus we will recognize him at the breaking of the bread.

Christ is risen and he is among us. Our sacred story, the history that gives us our identity, is celebrated and given full significance at the breaking of the bread, at the Eucharistic Table, where we know that Christ is manifesting himself. Christ is coming to our encounter.

The whole episode of this Gospel passage on Emmaus is a forshadowing of our Eucharistic liturgy, of the way we are called to allow Christ to assure us of his continued work of grace in our lives. We celebrate his word and then we renew ourselves at his divine supper. Only then can we too go out and proclaim 'the Lord is risen indeed, and has shown himself to us; we have encountered him, we have celebrated him together. We know who we are, we are his brothers and sisters, disciples and Children of God.

Good Friday

One of the most disturbing paintings of the crucifixion scene is by Mathias Grunewald, Jesus is depicted in terrible pain which is expressed in the twisted mangled body of Christ nailed to the cross. The figure of Christ towers over the other figures of Mary and John on his right, Mary of Magdala on her knees, and John the Baptist on his left. Christ seams heavy, his body weighted down by the plethora of wounds covering him head to toe. Grunewald used the medieval tradition of painting varying the size of the characters depending on their importance, and thus Christ is shown larger than the others. Grunewald's vivid and horrific look at the crucifixion reveals a meditation on just how much Christ took upon himself for our redemption. As Isaiah said: “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases... Wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”

For thousands of years the Church has used images and paintings, icons and statues to depict the life of Christ. It has been one of the great teaching tools She used to proclaim the faith over the centuries. But the crucifix, it seams to me, while central to the redemption story, is the hardest image to look upon, but look upon it we must! The church even gives us this day to commemorate this most brutal act. Fulton Sheen states that the reason it is hard is because people today want Christ without the cross, we want heaven with out the effort to get there, with out sacrifice. We want the happy Jesus he says, while other ideologies claiming to build heaven on earth without God claim the cross without Christ. Marxism, communism, and any human ideology ends up leaving us only in the burden of the Cross without receiving the sought after good: redemption. Only Christ on the cross does God’s sacrifice make sense.

“They shall look upon him, whom they have pierced.” States the evangilist. It is God's love for us that we see when we look upon Christ on the cross. This is another reason why it is so difficult to keep our eyes on Him. In our desensitized violent culture another dead human form seams like nothing much to behold. But Christ is different because in his raised body on the Cross, it is his raised over abundant love for humanity that we see. This is why we have a hard time to keep our eyes fixed on him. Because before the cross we are small, we do not love like he does, we do not give as he does. Pope Benedict states: “It is in the mystery of the Cross that the overwhelming power of the heavenly Father’s mercy is revealed in all its fullness. In order to win back the love of His creature, He accepted to pay a very high price: the blood of his only begotten Son... on the Cross, it is God Himself who begs the love of his creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us.

What marks us as Christians though, is the fact that we too are configured to Christ crucified by our common baptism. We are called to bear the cross within us, and say with St Paul: "if I boast of anything, I boast in Christ and him crucified" that one day we too can say with him,"it is no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me." Only through the cross can we learn the humility necessary to hand our life over to Jesus, who was able to conquer death. As st John says: "if we have died with him we shall also live with him."