Month: April 2015
They recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread
THE THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Today’s Gospel begins with this sentence:
“The two disciples recounted what had recounted on the way and how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking on the bread.”
And then goes on to relate a story that the Lucan author of an appearance of Jesus to the disciples in the upper room in which he asks for something to eat. As I told a similar story in last Sunday’s blog, I would like to focus on the wonderful story of Jesus walking with disciples to Emmaus. Here’s the scripture . . .
That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus Himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him. He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to Him in reply, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?” And He replied to them, “What sort of things?” They said to Him, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed Him over to a sentence of death and crucified Him. But we were hoping that He would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find His Body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that He was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but Him they did not see.” And He said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them what referred to Him in all the Scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, He gave the impression that He was going on farther. But they urged Him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So He went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while He was with them at table, He took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, but He vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the Eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. (Luke 24:13-35)
What a joy and a privilege it would be to share the evening meal with Jesus and the two disciples on the way to Emmaus! How blessed it would be to listen and learn as Jesus began with Moses and all the prophets to interpret every passage of scripture that referred to him. What a gift to watch him take the bread, bless it, break it, distribute it. What a joy to feel our hearts burning within and our eyes open wide to recognize him in the breaking of the bread.
How blessed it would be to listen and learn as Jesus began with Moses and all the prophets to interpret every passage of scripture that referred to him. What a gift to watch him take the bread, bless it, break it, distribute it. What a joy to feel our hearts burning within and our eyes open wide to recognize him in the breaking of the bread.
As we look back over the gospels, particularly that of the Lucan evangelist, we are reminded that Jesus afforded his contemporaries many such nourishing, enlightening and transforming experiences within the context of shared meals. Indeed , throughout the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, meal sharing was a profoundly important event, one that sealed friendships, affirmed marital and familial relationships, solidified political alliances and even confirmed and celebrated one’s faith and worship (as in the Passover meal.)
Israel’s wisdom literature is lavish in its banquet imagery. Recall Wisdom’s invitation as recorded in Proverbs: “Wisdom has built herself a house…she has prepared her table…Come eat of my bread, drink of the wine I have prepared for you.” Gradually our Israelite forbears in the faith began to envision the experience of salvation in terms of a great banquet prepared by God for all of humankind.
Also realized and clearly in evidence at those meals was the universal and welcoming love of God for all, especially sinners. Whereas Jesus’ contemporaries would have shunned table-fellowship with sinners, whom they regarded as off the playing field of salvation, Jesus deliberately associated with outcasts, welcoming them and agreeing to be welcomed by them. Recall Jesus’ willingness to be a guest in the homes of Levi and Zaccheus, both of whom were hated tax collectors. These would never have been welcomed into a respectable Jewish home. Yet it was to these very people who Jesus extended the privilege and blessings of table fellowship.
Then recall that when Jesus hosted the multitudes and fed the 5000 in the deserted place, he did not first determine who was worthy of his food or his presence. He fed them all, first with the food of his teaching and then with bread and fish. Given the enormity of the number who ate to their satisfaction, surely there were some in the crowd who fell short of the law’s standard, who sinned against their neighbors, who were remiss in some aspect of their lives. Nevertheless, without hesitation or discrimination, he welcomed and fed them all.
Now we come to this wonderful story of a beloved resurrection appearance of Jesus. As in most of the resurrection appearances, the risen Jesus was not immediately recognized by his own. Recognition came gradually and only with the insights afforded by faith. This fact enabled the evangelist to pursue a point of apologetics, namely that even though Jesus had been transformed by his resurrection and was not initially recognized, he was, nevertheless, the same Jesus who had walked with them, talked with them, and shared their lives while among them. He was the same Jesus who took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to feed the multitudes.
He was the same Jesus who allowed himself to be taken, nailed on the cross and who gave his life so that sinners may be blessed with forgiveness, freedom and salvation.
When we go to Mass on Sundays we walk a very short distance to Emmaus. We approach the altar; the bread will be broken, the wine will be blessed, and Christ will be present here just as truly as he was at Emmaus. Like those travelers, we come to know Christ in the scriptures, and in the breaking of the bread. We enter into this miracle, not once, but every time we come together to celebrate our faith that Christ died, buried, and risen again. As we receive the body and blood of Christ, once more, an ancient promise is fulfilled: “I am with you!”
Appreciate this great and wonderful experience, dear friends, that Jesus shares with us in his person even now two thousand years after the Last (or the First) Supper.
What a beautiful experience it is to share in the breaking of the bread – whether there is a glorious celebration with timpani and trumpets or just one other person present.
Yes appreciate this great and wonderful gift. Don’t ever take it for granted.
And before you go, here’s a lovely hymn, Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence with a slide show. Click Here.
Here are today’s readings: Click here.
PEACE BE WITH YOU!
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER
(Divine Mercy Sunday)
When Jesus appeared to the apostles after the resurrection, he would greet them with the words, “Peace be with you.”
They were very distressed and fearful, huddled together in the Upper Room behind locked doors.
They were very sad and distraught that the One they had come to love had been murdered. They were afraid that the religious leaders would crucify them as well.
They very much needed some peace. So the first thing Jesus says when he appears to them is “Peace be with you.”
Thus, peace is an Easter gift. It’s a gift that we can claim and pray for.
I’m not talking about peace between Israelis and Palestinians or Republicans and Democrats.
We usually think coming to peace with others. But we have to seek peace within ourselves first.
The question is: How do we come to peace within ourselves? If our mind is racing, if we cannot sit still for a few minutes, then we’re not at peace. Something may be askew in our environment that is causing us to be unsettled and anxious. Something in our life is causing us to not enjoy our own company.
But the real problem for many is that we may not LIKE ourselves. We may choose to avoid our own company by watching TV or listening to music or going out to a bar or a club to avoid being alone.
Yes, peace is a gift that every one of us needs. Peace within ourselves.
Being able to be calm and peaceful is a good indicator of our soul’s health. We should be at peace. And if we’re not, then we have our agenda laid out for us ~ to find out what is causing the lack of peace. Usually lack of peace is caused by something going on in us on the spiritual level. We learn to deal with our lack of peace by making deliberate efforts to be alone and to enjoy our own company.
Remember, that peace is a gift of the risen Lord. We can and ought to pray for that gift.
We can value it, beginning today on this second Sunday of Easter. And then we can be assured that it will come to us sooner or later.
I have known both peace AND anxiety; I have known a terrible fear that would give me no peace, even though I desperately sought it.
1) In 1982, I was hospitalized and the medication I was on made me want to crawl out of my skin. I couldn’t settle my limbs for more than a couple of seconds. But then, finally, something happened inside my soul — a religious experience I had in a dream — that calmed me as if a terrible storm had abated. From that moment on, I knew what peace is like.
The experience of peace is soul-embracing. You feel free, you feel content and settled. You feel connected with your loved ones, your environment, with God, indeed with the whole universe.
And you feel worthwhile. You feel that your own connectedness helps form the connection with others, with the whole world.
2). Two of my friends had a horrible rift that I felt I was asked to try to reconcile . I chose to make a small effort at bringing the two together, but saw that was impossible without heavy sessions between them. My peace had been unsettled by their lack of peace. So, we see that not practicing peacefulness has a ripple effect. More and more people get caught up in the unrest, the lack of peace.
them too. Peter had not yet emerged as their leader, so they were floundering and confused. They were without hope.
That is why it is so important to be at peace.
3.) I now seek an abiding peace, a peace that stays with me. And I take steps to deepen and enrich my feeling of peacefulness.
In recent months I have been given the tools to really enjoy my peace of mind and peace of soul. I can sit for a time at night in the dark, in silence, just simply “being.” In these hours, I realize that I am valuable, even though I am “doing nothing.” I just “be.”
Whenever I used to at preach at funerals, I often ask the question — Would you be content to feel the way you feel at this moment for all eternity? Would you be at peace if God called you to himself in the next moment?
I could sometimes answer my own question and answer: Yes, I would be content to feel as I feel at the present moment for all eternity.
4.) The Apostles were very disturbed after the crucifixion. Their life with Jesus ~ their hopes and dreams for the future ~ seemed to be totally shattered. They were afraid that the leaders would come for them and crucify them as well.
These issues were so strong in them that they could not bring themselves to believe the message that the Women brought them that Jesus had been raised. They were not at peace.
. . . . Until Jesus appeared to them. They no longer had to rely on faith, which was lacking for all of them, not just Thomas. They experienced the Risen One for themselves.
Then enter Thomas. He is not at peace. He says that unless he puts his finger in the nail-marks and his hand into his side, he will not believe.”
Thomas is honest.
Thomas needed to be convinced. He absolutely refused to say that he understood what he did not understand or to say he believed what he did not believe. There was an uncompromising honesty about him, says our scripture scholar friend William Barclay.
But when he was sure, he went all the way, My Lord and My God,” he proclaimed!
And Jesus responded by saying, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
Many more of us doubt significant things in our life. Specifically, we doubt our own self-worth.
We doubt matters of faith. We take our faith far more seriously by questioning and pursuing our questions than by relegating our faith to some closet in our mind. Some of us have had their faith shaken some personal crisis or a scandal in the church. Pursue your questions, though they may be painful. The questions can lead to a deeper faith. The turmoil, the risk of the Quest is better than stagnation.
Life for me today makes sense. I am at peace. I consider myself a Witness to the Resurrection. I KNOW Jesus lives. He is not just a historical figure who lived in the past. He lives and reigns in the universe today. I KNOW his love for me in the present moment.
I praise and thank God and his Son Jesus Christ our Lord for the gift of his peace
One final thought: We cannot share peace if we do not have peace. If we want there to be peace in our homes, we have to have peace within ourselves. Then we can share it.
THE PEACE OF THE LORD BE WITH YOU!
And now before you go, a couple of things,First, today is also known as Divine Mercy Sunday.
Divine Mercy Sunday is celebrated on the Sunday after Easter. It is originally based on the Devotion to the Divine Mercy that Saint Faustina Kowalska reported as part of her encounter with Jesus, and is associated with special promises from Jesus and indulgences issued by the Church. The image above is the lovely image of Jesus associated with this devotion.
And now, here is a powerful song to pull all of this together ~ , Click here.
And, finally here are the Mass readings for today. Click here.
With love,
Bob Traupman
Contemplative Writer
Jesus is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!
Easter Sunday 2015
Jesus, Seed sown-down / risen-up fruit-full
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Wheat-grain harvested whole / hallowed
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Bread-broken giving Life forever
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Wrathful grape pressed into purpled joy
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Dead and dread become dancing-dawn
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Light piercing / penetrating / ‘luminating / prism-ing
closed-minds and hearts
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Centering silence become
Stillpoint for healed / whole / holy souls
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Soul-thrilling / spine-tingling sound of music
trumpeting Easter triumph
for all God’s people
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Centering silence become
Stillpoint for healed / whole / holy souls
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Soul-thrilling / spine-tingling sound of music
trumpeting Easter triumph
for all God’s people
Arise and sing Alleluia!
Jesus! Love of my life!
Joy of my heart!
Song of my soul!
Source of my own New Life!
I never cease to thank and praise you
and Arise and sing forever
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!!!
Now I offer you your own way to praise our Lord along with a mighty chorus singing the Halleluiah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah ending with an even mightier Great Amen! Click Here.
Be sure to turn up your speakers and be sure to enter full screen. And click the < arrow at the top of your computer screen and then Click here for the readings for Easter Sunday Mass.
Happy Easter, Everyone!
Poem © Copyright Bob Traupman 2010. All rights reserved.
Permission granted for private sharing.
With lots of love,
Bob Traupman
Contemplative writer
What wondrous love is this?
Jesus the Lover
Like a sapling he grew in front of us, Like a root in arid ground… a thing despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering …. And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried. But we thought of him as someone punished, struck by God, and brought low.
Yet in him lies a punishment that brings in peace and through his wound we were healed – excerpted from Isaiah 53
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul? What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
GOOD FRIDAY 2015
Editor’s note: I wrote this piece in 1981, one of earliest writings. I still consider it one of my best pieces of prose. Its long, but I hope you enjoy it. You might wish to print it out and save it for bedtime. All the best, Bob.
Jesus is the one who is our tremendous Lover.
He came to live among us to reveal to us, his sisters and brothers, that we have a Father/God who loves us with a Love that is once a passionate, unconditional love and yet gentle, always inviting, never coercing. Jesus came among us to be our Love, to show the human race how to use the supreme power which God could give us: the intimate, infinite Love which is ours, if only we would claim it and model our lives after Jesus, who is Love itself.
Jesus was to be for us the model of Love because he was willing to experience in his heart the depths of human emotion. He risked time and again to embrace the sorrow, the agony, the unfreedom, the need of those who came to him to be healed. He risked being burdened by the needs of others. He risked being disheartened by those who would take from him and not even say thanks. He risked being misunderstood and rejected by the authorities of the day and even his neighbors in his home town. He risked the pain of realizing that even his closest disciples and friends had narrow vision and missed the main point of his message.
He risked all, and realized that, in spite of the pain and sorrow, in his heart, the soft Voice of the Father within him was asking him to keep going, to risk even more. To go deeper into his heart and to carve out still more and more places for those he would touch and heal, until one day there would be room in his heart for the whole world.
I doubt that Jesus ever forgot a single individual that he encountered, not even those who oppressed him. He kept them all in his great heart, remembering them, praying for them, hoping that they would open their hearts to the One who Loved them with a passionate Love — the Father/God of all. He must have realized how important it was to see and feel the tragedy of the corruption he witnessed among the religious and political leaders of the day, to keep even these things in his heart. As painful as it was, he hoped that by keeping them there some of the great evil he saw would be disarmed and tamed.
That’s all he could do, after all — absorb the tragedy, the struggle, the sin, the failures in Love of the human race in his great, great heart. Yes, he healed a few sick and gave the gift of sight to some, but most of all he Loved: He let people into his heart (that’s the definition of Love, after all: to let someone into one’s heart) there to be comforted, if just for a moment. For one brief moment in the heart of the Lord Jesus is enough for any of us.
He had room for young John and impetuous Peter. And for Judas. He had room for the outcasts of his day, Zacheus and Matthew and Mary Magdalen. And he brought the outcasts in and seated them at his table He had room for beggars and lepers and blind people. And he had room for the Pharisees who broke his heart by their refusal to see and understand.
We remember that he was capable of deep emotion. He wept profoundly when he saw in prophecy what would happen to Jerusalem because of the hardness of the people’s hearts. And yet, even the gift of his tears and the greatness of his Love would not stop the destruction that would come because of Israel’s hardness of heart and lack of vigilance.
In the end, he wept in the garden. I like to believe that his agony was not focused on the trauma he personally was about to endure but because the Father permitted him, in that moment, to experience to the depths the reality of evil and tragedy in the world. He must have experienced some of the pain and loss that many of us feel when we encounter hardness of heart and misunderstanding.
Jesus embodied the compassion of God — the mercy, the tenderness, the Hesed of God (to use the wonderful Hebrew word). God wanted to be known as the Merciful One. And we, likewise, are instructed to “Be compassionate as our heavenly Father is compassionate.”
Jesus became for us the “Man of Sorrow.” familiar with suffering” ~ the suffering Servant of Yahweh. He bore the weight of the world’s refusal to Love and even worse its refusal to be Loved by the God of Love. He allowed that evil, that senseless tragedy of the human race, to be absorbed, and thereby redeemed and purified, with his own blood. In his own bloodstream the cosmic battle between the forces of Love and Hate was waged. And “his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. In him the great cosmic battle was focused. Our great compassionate God sent his Son to bear within his soul the brunt of that cosmic storm.
We are filled with awe at such overwhelming Love. And so we honor this evening his great, great heart. But most importantly we should realize that he has become for us Love itself so that we will also might become Love.
The one essential ingredient of the Christian religion is to Love as Jesus has Loved us. We are to become compassionate as Jesus is compassionate. We, like Jesus, are called not to be afraid to embrace the suffering, the tragedy, the sin of the world, so that in Love we will join our hearts to his and, as St. Paul says, “to make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.”
Perhaps we can say, therefore, that there are two kinds of people in the world — those who are willing to accept their own share of suffering in the world (and a bit more for Jesus’ sake) and those who cannot or will not bear even the suffering caused by their own failures and sins. The compassionate ones do what they do out of Love, a seemingly foolish Love. Some Love because they have been opened up to a mystical awareness that they, like Jesus, are making their own soul and body available as an arena for the cosmic drama of interaction between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.
I do not pity those who suffer. I rather pity those who are afraid to suffer. Out of suffering comes understanding — a larger perspective of the world and with it a practical wisdom that tempers Law and Life with Mercy. Out of suffering comes the ability to see the face of Christ in even a hardened criminal or a seemingly pitiful alcoholic.
The ability to see, to understand, the inner workings of people’s lives is a gift far greater than the suffering one must endure to attain it. To-suffer-unto-understanding (a definition of compassion) is to be able to look upon the world as Jesus does and as he invites us to do in the Beatitudes. (Of course, a person can suffer without understanding — especially when we are angry about and refuse to accept our lot of suffering. But if we pray faithfully while we suffer, God will most assuredly gift us with his own very special kind of understanding.)
Understanding is the goal of suffering for those who have eyes to see. Understanding which sees through the eyes of Jesus. Understanding allows us the courage to be with Jesus hanging on the Cross and to see what he saw from that perspective. Understanding allows us the courage to go with Jesus into the bowels of the earth and descend into hell and to see what Jesus saw. Then, too, understanding allows us to feel what Jesus felt when he was lifted from the grave.
I have always had an inner sense that the fastest, most efficient way to handle a crisis was to face it head on — not to avoid it. And so, I invite you to “go with” the suffering. Explore it. Allow yourself to experience the feelings, as painful and confused and frightening as they may be. The more you fight it, the more you will suffer. Ask Jesus the Light to lead you through the darkness. Then have faith and confidence that he will. (After all, the worst you will experience is what Jesus experienced, as long as you follow the will of God. (Other persons have suffered more cruel deaths than crucifixion.) And if you truly want to follow the will of God and are praying daily, then be assured that God is leading you. Take his hand in the darkness and follow — even if you can barely see the ground in front of you!
The easiest way through suffering is to stretch out our arms and allow ourselves to be nailed to our cross. Don’t fight it. Surrender to the will of God. Jesus in his agony on Thursday night saw through the nails in his hands and the crown of thorns on his head to the Resurrection. He didn’t ignore the Cross; he saw it and the horizon beyond it.Jesus didn’t focus on the pain. The pain of the Cross was only a brief moment (which he knew he had the strength to endure) in the history of his lordship presiding over the business of the universe. So you, too, should not focus on the painful aspects of our life. Look instead for the cause of the pain. Look for the reality — the truth! And remember that Jesus said “the truth shall make you free!” See as Jesus sees; that is, see and accept the truth. And leap from your cross as a butterfly leaps from the cocoon and as Jesus leapt from the grave.
“Impossible!” you may say, especially if you have been suffering for years.
“Not so!” says Jesus and the whole company of prophets and martyrs and confessors and virgins.
Ask for strength and you will receive strength.
Ask for guidance and you will be led through the darkness to a point you will recognize.
Ask to understand and Jesus will let you see yourself through his eyes.
But remember! Don’t focus on the pain. All those gory pictures of Jesus in agony and bloody crucifixes of the past generation, hopefully, are, hopefully, gone for good.
The Cross is the focal point in that we realize the great Love which Jesus has for us and what he personally has done for us. But one must not forget to look at the horizon beyond the Cross. The sky on that first Good Friday afternoon undoubtedly was an awesome sight to behold. The cross, the pain that is our lot in life to endure, is there only to be transformed and transcended. The cross is but a moment.
Suffering in life is only a means to greater life. It is not our final lot. Resurrection is. Glory is. Triumph is. Though the paradox is that we must accept our cross totally to be through with it. We are invited to surrender to our Father in complete abandonment as Jesus did, as if we were to leap off a cliff and know that we will land in the Loving arms of our great God.
A further delusion of spirituality of the past generation is that our reward will not come until the next life. What is delusional about that is that we fail to realize the kingdom is already inaugurated by Jesus in history by his triumph on the Cross. Our lives are already illumined by the light of the resurrection. And there is no reason that we cannot triumph here and now — if we accept our cross. And, in fact, I am convinced that it will be Christians bold enough to take up in their hand and in their minds the Cross of Jesus who will lead us in XXI and XXII Centuries, just as this has been true in every age of the Church.
And so, the question that we ponder this Good Friday, once again, is:
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul? What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
And the answer is:
The great, great Love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
who Loved us so much that he stretched out his arms in the most loving,
indeed, the most-nonviolent act, the world has ever seen.
He stretched out his arms in the face of his enemies and said from his Cross:
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Come, then adore the Lord who wants to be for us all our Beloved.
Come, then, adore the Lord, the tremendous Lover.
Renew your Love for him and know even more than ever before.
It is by the holy Cross that we have been redeemed.
What wondrous love is this, O my soul? What wondrous love is this?
And now, before you go, you’ve just HAVE to listen to this awesome orchestral arrangement of this beautiful hymn sung by Steve Green. Be sure to turn up your speakers and enter full screen. (Click on the underlined word.)
With love,
Bob Traupman
Contemplative Writer
The sorrowful mothers of the world
Father Bob's Reflections 