Recently, I was reading a commentary on the Gospel of Luke by the Anglican scripture scholar, N.T. Wrigh, and the following line really resonated with me:

If the story of the prodigal son has a claim to be the finest story Jesus ever told, the tale of the two on the road to Emmaus must have an equal claim to be the finest scene Luke ever sketched…At the level of drama it has everything. Sorrow, suspense, puzzlement, gradual dawning of light; then, in the second half, unexpected actions, astonished recognition, a flurry of excitement and activity. It is both a wonderful, unique, spellbinding tale, and also a model (and Luke surely knew this) for a great deal of what being a Christian, from that day to this, is all about. (Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 292–293.)

The Gospel account of the two disciples going to Emmaus is one that I always look forward to reading, and these words from N.T. Wright put words to why I (and so many) are drawn to this passage.

I am always struck by the candor of the two disciples as they speak to Jesus about Jesus (as they did not yet know it was Him to whom they were speaking).  They said: “we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.” (Lk 24:21) Their hope about Jesus, that He might finally be the Messiah, seemed now to be dead, just as Jesus was dead.  Jesus then takes the opportunity to present to them the story of salvation, the details with which they were no doubt familiar, but Jesus connects those details in a way that makes it clear that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.  Their hope had not been in vain!  No doubt Jesus stirred something within them, as seen in the reaction to Him as He prepared to part company, urging Him: “Stay with us, for it is evening and the day is almost over.” (Lk 24:29) Then, as Jesus breaks and blessed the bread, Luke writes that “their eyes were opened and they recognized Him.” (Lk 24:31) The hope that they thought dead was revived, which meant that everything He had said about Himself and what He would accomplish in bringing about salvation was true.  I have therefore chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart to connect with this scene from the Gospel:

Heart of Jesus, Salvation of those who hope in thee, have mercy on us

During this Easter Season, we are invited to renew our faith that all that Jesus did and said is true.  Nothing is more remarkable than what happened on that Easter Sunday, and if He was able to accomplish that miraculous feat, then all of His promises can be trusted, not the least of which the one He gives to us when speaking about the Eucharist, which Pope Pius XII calls a gift of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Church.  Here is that promise from Jesus about the Eucharist:

he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever. (Jn 6:54-58)

As I write this, I don’t have access to my copy of St. Bonaventure’s life of St. Francis, so the continuation of those reflections will have to wait a week.

The First Reading for this weekend’s Mass, however, provides us with a good scriptural reality to ponder. St. Peter, in his speech on the day of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, quotes Psalm 16 to teach about Jesus. This quotation is significant, and it begins to teach us the powerful and profound truth that Jesus has fulfilled the scriptures of the Old Testament. 

We read in the Gospel of Luke that after Jesus rose from the dead he appeared to his apostles in the upper room and “he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures…” (Luke 24:44-45). Everything written about him in the Psalms must be fulfilled.

When we think of the psalms, we generally think of long sung prayers from a book in the Old Testament. We might think of a song between the two readings at Mass – generally kind of hard to hear or understand. We might even love to pray the Psalms and think of them as beautiful prayers to God. All of that is true, yet it is good for us to remember and read them also as strikingly accurate prophecies of the Messiah, Jesus Christ – words that he himself prayed. 

Really, the book of the Psalms is the most-quoted book of the New Testament. The early Christians and the Apostles especially, with their minds opened to the ways that the Old Testament scriptures had been fulfilled, saw in the Psalms a rich prefiguring of Jesus. Perhaps most poignantly is the great Psalm 22 which we hear quoted by Jesus himself on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me.” If you read through the rest of that psalm, you will see that the whole of it really describes in detail the sufferings Jesus would endure during his passion. 

On a happier note, in this Easter season and particularly with today’s first reading in mind, the Psalms also prefigure the resurrection of Christ. We read in the Psalms about how God triumphs over worldly struggles and even over death itself. The quotation of today’s first reading is, again, from Psalm 16. One could, before Christ, read this psalm about God’s promise that he would take care of the one who takes refuge in him. After Christ, however, we see that the words of this psalm are clearly oriented toward the future resurrection. 

Here is the section of the Psalm that St. Peter quotes. Read it as though you were Christ preparing for his passion in the Agony in the Garden:

“I saw the Lord ever before me,
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
Therefore my heart has been glad and my tongue has exulted;
my flesh, too, will dwell in hope,
because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld,
nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption.
You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence.”

One of the greatest effects of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus’s Death and Resurrection is our liberation from sin, making possible new life already here as we anticipate the fullness of that new life in Heaven.  This liberation from sin was given to us despite humanity’s infidelity over and over again throughout history.  Fittingly, the invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart that I have chosen for this Divine Mercy Sunday on which we celebrate this gift of liberation from sin is the following:

Heart of Jesus, patient and rich in mercy, have mercy on us

As we hear in the Gospel for today’s Mass, Jesus gave to His Apostles the ability to be instruments of this mercy when, after breathing on them, He says: “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” (Jn 20:22b-23) We know all too well the sad reality that, after we have been liberated from sin through the Sacrament of Baptism, we still fall into sin.  Over and over again, we stumble, but the Lord shows His patience toward us by inviting us to bring those sins to Him through His priests in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and to have that liberation renewed.  There are no limits to this mercy.  It is not as though we have a finite number of times that we can go to confession, or that there are only a certain number of times that we can confess the same sins before that mercy runs out.  Quite the contrary!  Jesus’s Sacred Heart is rich in mercy toward of all His children.  All that He asks is that we ask for it, and He will surely give it to us.

Thanks be to God, this message of Divine Mercy has been very popular over the past few decades, especially since Pope St. John Paul II canonized St. Faustina Kowalska, the Apostle of Divine Mercy, in the Jubilee Year of 2000.  So many of Jesus’s messages given to her highlight just how profound this gift of mercy is.  One passage in particular from her Diary is one I love to meditate on:

Let the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy. My daughter, write about My mercy towards tormented souls. Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy. (Diary, 1146)

It is hard to for us to grasp how our appealing for His mercy as we acknowledge our sins brings delight to Him.  After all, every sin we commit is an offense against Him and it can be very embarrassing to have to bring those sins to confession.  On the other hand, our appealing to Him for His mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation is an affirmation and an act of thanksgiving for the gift of His sacrifice on the Cross, that it was not in vain.  He willingly died for us, so that when we find ourselves separated from Him by sin, we have an outlet to be restored to that new life His Resurrection won for us.  This indeed is the Good News of the Resurrection that we continue to celebrate with Easter!