Easter Sunday

(William Adolphe Bouguereau, The Holy Women at the Tomb, 1893)



But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." (Luke 24:1-5)

So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:29-32)

And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." (Acts 1:9-11)

So often we are looking for Jesus in all the wrong places. The women went to the tomb looking for a dead man when the One they sought was alive. The two men travelling on the road to Emmaus did not recognize Jesus who was with them on the journey. They only recognized him in the breaking of the bread, in the Eucharist. At the Ascension, the apostles are looking at Jesus leaving them, but He is not really leaving them.


I am reminded of a story that a priest told during a homily about a little boy preparing for his first Communion. This boy knew where to look for Jesus. Another priest was not convinced that the little boy understood enough about the Eucharist to take his first Communion. However, in talking with the priest, the boy pointed to the crucifix in the church and said, "That looks like Jesus but is not Jesus." Then pointing to the tabernacle, the boy said, "That does not look like Jesus but is Jesus." Then, pointing to the priest himself, the boy said, "That does not look like Jesus but is Jesus. Only fatter." The boy understood the crucifix to be only an artistic portrayal of Jesus, the Eucharist to be the Real Presence of Jesus, and the priest when saying mass to be standing in persona Christi.

Echoing Matthew 25:31-46, Mother Teresa said: "I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?" (Carol Kelly-Gangi, editor, Mother Teresa: Her Essential Wisdom, p. 19). As with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is in front of us every day in the people we encounter. We merely need the eyes of the little boy or Mother Teresa to see them and Him.

Jesus is not hiding from us. Yet we seem to look for Him where He isn't and miss Him where He is. May this great Easter season we are embarking upon fill us with the grace we need to seek first the kingdom, and then we will find the King.

Blessed Mother Teresa and the personal and social nature of the Eucharist

As a follow-up to Pope Benedict XVI's December 10, 2008 general audience, here is Blessed Mother Teresa talking about the relationship between the work of the Missionaries of Charity and the Eucharist:

Our lives have to continuously feed on the Eucharist. If we were not
able to see Christ under the appearance of bread, neither would it be possible
for us to discover him under the humble appearance of the bruised bodies of the
poor.

Mother Teresa shows us a moving example of what Pope Benedict called "the personal and social character of the Sacrament of the Eucharist."

Let us all live lives which continuously feed on the Eucharist so that the Eucharist may bring us closer to Jesus and to others, especially the poor. As we near the Nativity of the Lord, let us remember that he chose to come in poverty. Let us be poor in spirit and rich in compassion for those poor in the material necessities of life. But let us remember Mother Teresa constant warning about the spiritual wealth of the materially poor, and the spiritual poverty of the materially wealthy.

Mother Teresa on the Eucharist

Here is Blessed Mother Teresa on the Eucharist:

"Our lives have to continuously feed on the Eucharist. If we were not able to see Christ under the appearance of bread, neither would it be possible for us to discover him under the humble appearances of the bruised bodies of the poor" (Mother Teresa: Her Essential Wisdom, edited by Carol Kelly-Gangi, p. 115).

This passage is in a section of the book entitled "The Religious Life." Mother Teresa often talked about how the Eucharist (especially in Eucharistic adoration) was the source of strength for herself and her sisters, and she often distinguished what the Missionaries of Charity do from what social workers do. We should all be aware of the crucial relationship between the Eucharist and religious vocations.

However, we would also miss an important lesson that such devotion to the Eucharist is not exclusively for priests and religious sisters and brothers. Mother Teresa makes clear here that there is no dichotomy between faith and justice, between morality and social action, between piety and praxis. She so succinctly links the idea of "we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7) to our interactions with others. Think of the story of the Good Samaritan,. The Samaritan did not see a Jewish person, he did not see people from communities in conflict. Instead, he saw a fellow human being, a fellow child of God. He knew he was his brother's keeper. Or think of the story of the woman taken in adultery. Jesus saw a woman who, yes, had harmed her husband, family, and the community by her actions. But he also saw a person who had wounded herself, and he could help heal her, and thereby heal the others.

Faith in the Real Presence is a gift of grace from God. We cannot will ourselves to believe or reason ourselves to "understand" it. We are generally well aware of how difficult it is to believe in the Real Presence because it seems so contrary to what our senses tell us. But we usually are not as aware of how difficult it is to see people as God sees them. We see others as petty, as annoying, as stupid, as hateful, as inferior, as ugly, as cruel. And they probably are. But we don't often see them as ill-used, as miseducated, insecure, as wounded, as lonely, as defeated, as hopeless.

Let us pray for the grace to see Jesus in the Eucharist. And let us pray to see others as God sees them. With St. Paul, let us reflect: "At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12).