April 30 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org
-check out this week's LinC Letter at www.parishlincletter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass at 4:00 PM on Saturday and 12:30pm on Sunday

 Blind seeing!

This great resurrection story of the road to Emmaus is the scriptural basis for Pope Francis theology of encounter.   You might recall that this theology or mystery of encounter was also the basis for our Lenten mission called Church @home".

The Gospel story of the  road to Emmaus and the spirituality of encounter teach us and call us to meet the Lord Jesus through the encounter with our neighbor, especially the poor neighbor in need.  The two disciples on the road to Emmaus are for me an image of how many of us as Catholics have walked our journey of faith. We have gathered together as believers looking for Jesus  however not recognizing him as he is in our midst.

 Much of our inability to recognize Jesus as he is in the midst of us has to do with our religious training. What I mean is that we have been trained from our youngest days to recognize Jesus only in certain places and certain ways, for example in the word of God, in the priest, in the blessed sacrament.   That religious training may have caused a certain blindness in our seeing.

I  call it  blind seeing. We have trained our eyes of faith  and that training has limited us and actually become a certain blindness.

Through the church at home process and through the call of Pope Francis we are being invited to have our eyes open and recognize Jesus  in all the traditional places however in an additional place-in the midst where two or more of us are gathered in his name.