3^rd Sunday of Easter (B); April 14, 2024

Acts 3:13-15,17-19.  Ps 42.  1 Jn 2:1-5.  Lk 24:35-48

Deacon Jim McFadden

            The Easter season offers us a spirituality of hope.  If Jesus can undergo such suffering and death and rise to new life, he can do the same thing in our life—right here, right now; there are no exceptions.  No matter what our existential reality is, we can experience God’s grace and support as we struggle with our own sufferings.

            On this 3^rd Sunday of Easter, the Gospel describes perhaps the most celebrated walks of all-time—when Jesus accompanied the disciples on the road to Emmaus. The disciples were forlorn,  disillusioned; they had given up  hope that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah.  In the midst of their darkness, at the low-point of their lives, Jesus appeared to them on the road and reminded them what they had experienced when they accompanied him during his public ministry.    Previously, when they returned to Jerusalem, they had heard incredible stories from the other disciples, who had found new hope when Jesus appeared to them.  But, they still weren’t convinced because they didn’t experience the Risen Christ.  But Jesus then appears to the disciples on the Road to Emmaus to reinforce the hard truth that is through suffering that we come to new life.  That’s how they will experience the Risen Christ.

            This was the theme of a film, The Legend of Bagger Vance, directed by Robert Redford in 2001.  The main character, Rannulph Junuh, is an Everyman figure, played by a young Matt Damon.  He is a heroic American, a golf champion, who was a victim of the injustice of the grim warfare in the trenches of WWI.  Broken and disillusioned, he returns to his old home in Savananah.  Shattered and unable to see any hopeful possibilities for this life after the gruesome battlefield experiences, he seems resigned to play out his life incapable of rising to new life.

            In his darkest  moment, a mysterious Bagger Vance, played by Will Smith joins him on what will be a journey of recovery: the golf tournament.  Bagger Vance is a genial stranger, a modest caddy who doesn’t impose his will on Rannulph, and he is the catalyst by which Junuh’s eyes are open in self-awareness and helps him to a new life by reawakening his love for his girlfriend, Adele, played by Charlize Theron.  When Junuh recovers hope and embraces his new life, Bagger Vance disappears to accompany others on their Emmaus walk, as Jesus must have done after his disciples recognized him.  What Jesus did to the disciples on the Road to Emmaus 2000 years ago, he does to us as well in 2024.

            There is a familiar adage that the darkest hour is just before the dawn.  In the darkest moment of Ranulph Junuh’s life, Bagger Vance appeared.  Similarly, the disciples walk on the Road to Emmaus, Jesus appeared opening life to them in unimaginable ways.  The life that was hidden in the darkness will burst forth in a radical new life.  The darkness (death) and new life (resurrection) go together.  In order to experience the Resurrected Christ, we need to die with Christ: the Cross necessarily precedes Resurrection.

            This is the mystery of our Faith.  We must die to our egoic, self-referential self in order to be transformed.  Whatever old yeast, of an old wineskin of corruption must be cast out if we are going to experience the Risen Christ in our heart and soul.  On Easter, we renew our Baptismal vows.  What is it that we renounce?  We let go of our attachment to the goods of the world—our addiction to wealth, status and prestige, dominative power, and unbridled pleasure.  More to it, we detach ourselves from the world of violence, prejudice, and indifference to the anawim—the lowly, vulnerable, and poor.  Too often we harbor, abated by the social internet and cable news, feelings of anger, resentment, vengeance, retribution, selfishness, and disdain.

            Today’s readings from Acts and Luke , proclaim that Jesus has died and he is risen.  To participate in his resurrected life, we, too, need to die to all the wickedness within our own heart and in the world.  We set our hearts higher, just as Rannulph Junuh did with Bagger Vance and just as the disciples did with Jesus  on Road to Emmaus. 

            May the Blessed Virgin Mary help us to die to ourselves and to live the experience of resurrected life.  Amen.