The story of the Cleopas and his companion encountering the Risen Lord on their way to Emmaus will be problematic for those who rely on Doctor Google to obtain answers not only on health issues but also on questions relating to all sorts of matters, regardless they are crucial or trivial. Why this Gospel passage can be problematic? Because Jesus, whom the two disciples encountered, takes time to give answers unlike Doctor Google. Jesus doesn’t provide instantaneous answers.
If you are concerned now that I will take time to deliver this message I can assure you that I will take time … but I can also put you at ease. Taking time here doesn’t mean that I will be preaching for an hour but that I, and other good fathers, will be preaching Sunday in and Sunday out. The first lesson the Dear Lord teaches his messengers is to be patient while delivering the Good News. A homily doesn’t need to answer all questions. The first lesson Jesus teaches the receivers of the Good News is the same, be patient at getting answers to the questions which occupy your mind. If you appreciate brief homilies you should also appreciate the interval between Sundays when you are given a chance to process what you heard in church: to pray and meditate the message.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! St Luke tells us that when “Jesus came up and walked by the side of Cleopas and the other disciple; something prevented them from recognising him.” Why didn’t he reveal himself straightaway to them? Why did he allow their eyes to be kept from recognising him? Why did he have to repeat all those things he had already told them before? To come to appreciate what happened to those two followers of the Lord let us go back to the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. The Evangelist first tells us how the birth of John the Baptist was announced to Zechariah. The immediate result of that announcement was that the priest was left dumbstruck for nine months; until the boy was born. Was God punishing Zechariah for disbelieving the message the Archangel Gabriel brought to him? Not at all, God was rather patient with Zechariah giving him nine months of prayer and reflection as he was unable to communicate with others. In this way the father of the prophet could process the message about the role his son was to play in the plan of salvation which was unfolding.
Cleopas and his companion were treated to a similar experience. The Lord spent most of the Easter Sunday walking and talking patiently to those two people. He offered them his time, his listening ear and his wisdom which was pouring out from his heart and mind. They didn’t get quick answers to the questions which were eating them away. They, however, got the Good News which penetrated the depth of their sorrow, confusion, disappointment, anger and loss. The wisdom they were given was transformative rather than informative. The two runners were transformed into messengers. Though they still had to learn more patience as they couldn’t wait until morning to tell other disciples what happened to them and rushed back to Jerusalem even if it was dark outside.
What Christian people have learnt, however, over the course of the history is to take time to process the mind boggling questions. We have fifty days to unpack the richness of Easter and to enlighten our lives with it. We have the whole year to see ourselves, our Church and our society in the light of Jesus’ life, death, and Resurrection. Even more, we don’t limit our Christian formation to one year. We keep returning to the themes of our life in Christ and our salvation year in and year out.
What we also come to appreciate is that answers come from talking faith to each other. It is because when faith is talked the Lord is there. He promised to be present where two or three are gathered in his name. In fact St Luke used the word homily to describe the talking Cleopas and his companion did before Jesus joined them.  That’s a reminder for all of us, those who go up to the lectern to preach on Sundays and those who take comfortable seats opposite to the lectern, that a homily is not limited to 10 minutes at Mass but is to be prolonged to the whole week when we are to talk faith to our loved ones at home, colleges at work, fellow students at school or University. That’s why I don’t need to preach for hours as I have faith that you can continue the faith talking during the week.
Answers can also come from the Archangel Gabriel but then get ready for being left dumbstruck.

What would be a good place to celebrate the Feast of Divine Mercy? May be the Shrine where St Faustyna Kowalska who was entrusted with the message of Divine Mercy lived and died in Cracow, Poland? May be Vilnius in Lithuania where the first image of Divine Mercy is still treasured? May be the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Keysborough, here in Melbourne? …  What about a prison?
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! A few weeks ago I was approached by a bishop looking for a priest to fill in for an absent prison chaplain. When I was checking my diary, I realised that it was going to be Divine Mercy Sunday. As I was staring at my diary I heard a voice inside me saying: “You cannot find a better place to preach God’s unfathomable mercy.” So what could I tell the bishop rather then: “I’d love to take the message of Divine Mercy to those who are behind bars”?
Somehow rather John’s Gospel for this Sunday takes us inside a “prison” as we read that: “the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews.” It was “in the evening of that same day, the first day of the week.” It was the evening of the first Easter Sunday; however there is no celebration mood among the disciples. No one is thinking about egg hunt either. Their fear paralyses them. The fear of the disciples in the Upper Room doesn’t differ from our fear. We also fear: of rejection, failure, humiliation, illness, loneliness, death, unemployment, aging, etc. That’s why I would like to invite you, my Dear Fellow Christians, to imagine yourself in that well bolted room. Step into that room full of fear and take your fear with you into that room.
So you are inside now, you are “inmates” with the other fearful disciples. What you have in common is your fear. You may feel urged to talk to others about your fear and certainly you will hear others talking about their fear as well. If there is fear it means there is also stress, impatience, oversensitivity, suspicion, anger and self-focus. Now in the midst of that rather depressing gathering appears the Risen Lord. Why did he come? “Peace be with you” says he. Is he going to counsel us out of fear? “As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.” We are not ready! We need to sort out ourselves first. “After saying this he breathed on them” like God breathed on the first human and “thus man became a living being.” At the beginning of creation God out of dirt fashioned Adam and into that dirt he breathed his spirit. In the Upper Room the Risen Lord out of fearful people created a community and breathed on them his Spirit to fashion them into the Church. Can you see how the Merciful Lord moves them from their self-focus to other-focus? Where is their fear now? It has given way to their new mission. “Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained." The Church truly recognises in these words the origin of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation as we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1485). But it would be an injustice done to today’s Feast of Divine Mercy if we limited those words to the formula of absolution which we hear after confessing our sins to a priest. The Risen Lord, the Merciful One, has given us his Spirit so that we ourselves could forgive from the heart those who have wronged us. What’s a point to tell others how great our Lord is if we choose to harbour resentment? We contradict ourselves.
My Dear Friends! Our Blessed Lord invites us to be a shining witness of having been forgiven. In the name of the forgiveness we have been granted he sends us to forgive others. Last year during the Jubilee of Mercy Pope Francis conceived an idea of Missionaries of Mercy. They were priests who were sent by the Holy Father to forgive even the sins which only the Pope can forgive. As you emerge from this Divine Mercy Sunday I pray so that you can believe that the Lord Jesus has appointed you to be his Missionaries of Mercy too. Jesus gives you authority even greater than that given by the Pope last year to those specially chosen clerics; Jesus gives you authority to forgive those who have wronged you. Exercise that authority generously and faithfully.

            Next time when someone asks you: “How are you?” say this: “I am still alive.” You will get their attention, particularly when you say it to shop attendants. However the reason I prefer it is that it has a deep Christian connotation. In the Scriptures we read that in God “we live, and move, and have our being.” When I say that I am still alive I acknowledge that my life is sustained by the power of the One whose Resurrection we celebrate this morning.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This Easter Sunday is not the first time this year we celebrate someone being raised from the dead. A couple of weeks ago we remembered the rising from the dead of Jesus’ close friend Lazarus. What I would like to focus on now is that after Jesus Christ called Lazarus out of the grave the leaders of the Jews decided to kill Lazarus as well. It was a very peculiar reaction to Lazarus’ return to the land of the living. Why was Lazarus so dangerous to the status quo of the religious, political and social establishment? Lazarus was extremely dangerous to the establishment because he became a walking reminder of the power of Christ Jesus. When Lazarus was walking down the street in Bethany or Jerusalem the people would say: “That’s the man who was given life by Jesus Christ.” When Lazarus went shopping people in the shop would say: “That’s the man who was given life by Jesus Christ.” When Lazarus went to have a beer the people in the pub would say: “That’s the man who was given life by Jesus Christ.” I presume they didn’t even dare to ask him: “How are you” because they would hear: “I am still alive, thank to Jesus Christ.”
            I am recalling Lazarus on this Easter Sunday because each one of us, baptised Catholics, is called to be like Lazarus. We are called to be walking reminders of the power of the Risen Lord wherever we appear, even in a pub. St Paul in the Letter to the Colossians wrote: “You have been brought back to true life with Christ.” The Apostle spoke of the Christians in Colossae, and about you and me who confess Jesus as the Lord and God. Lazarus returned to the same world he lived in before he died, he didn’t return to a better or ideal world, but he returned with life in him which was Christ’s. Our Baptism doesn’t transport us to a better world either, but we return to the world filled with the Spirit of the Risen Lord. Believe, my Dear fellow Catholics, that there is in you the Spirit which crushed the chains of sin and death in the Risen Body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe it with “all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  If Jesus is who he says he is, give your life to him, so that through you others could come to love our God with “all their heart, with all their mind, and with all their strength.”
            At the beginning I said that “I am still alive.” That’s the picture of the first disciples of Jesus we get from today’s Gospel of John. After the Good Friday they were lost, they were in despair, they were shattered. There was no life in them, but remember what happened to them on the Easter Sunday. The Good News of the Resurrection of Jesus got them moving. In fact the Gospel passage for this morning is better than any gym session. There is so much action: “Mary came running to Peter,” “Peter and the other disciple ran together to the tomb.” You can be out of breath even reading that. It is a very fast moving event. Those people who were flat before now appear to be alive. The Good News of Jesus’ Resurrection makes them “Still alive.” The same Good News I give you today. Jesus Christ who for us and for our salvation was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea is RISEN and with him “You have been brought back to true life.” Believe this Good News, “Let these words I urge on you today be written on your heart. You shall repeat them to your children and say them over to them whether at rest in your house or walking abroad, at your lying down or at your rising.”
            How are you my Brothers and Sister?
Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

            Have you ever had someone tell you: “I love you.”? Are you convinced that the person was telling you the truth? How did you know that? Did you use a lie detector to verify that? You took it on faith, didn’t you? It means you are people of faith, and I haven’t even started talking about God yet. As believers we apply faith to God but actually faith is deeply woven into our daily dealings. Even those who claim to be unbelievers they do practice faith they place in other people.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Have you ever thought how many times Jesus himself said: “I love you”? In the Bible we don’t have a single occurrence of Jesus say that but we don’t doubt his love, do we?
            I would like you now to close your eyes and to focus on your breathing...
            Once you are comfortable with the rhythm of your breathing pay attention to that brief moment after breathing out and before breathing in. It is a short pause…
            As you realise that short pause, think about that moment of Jesus on the cross when he breathed out and didn’t take another breath. He died…
            In the Gospel of John we have Jesus’ words: It is accomplished” then “gave up his spirit.” Jesus donated his spirit to us. His last exhale was our first inhale.  So in your meditation add now this: as you breathe out say under your breath the words Christ uttered on his last breath: “It is accomplished.” As you inhale say as your own thank you prayer: “I am now alive.” Keep doing it. As Jesus is giving up his spirit you receive it from him:
It is accomplished (…) I am now alive…
It is accomplished (…) I am now alive…
It is accomplished (…) I am now alive…
It is accomplished (…) I am now alive…
            Please open your eyes now.
The Scriptures tell us that in God we “live and move and have our being.” God upon fashioning the physical body of the first human being “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” In the fullness of time when people were suffocating because of their sins Jesus, the Son of God “gave up the spirit.” If today we live and move and have our being it is because God didn’t give up on us but he gave up his spirit for us.
            Last week I was reading Herald Sun. There was a letter written by a grandfather to his two-year-old grandson. The boy shouldn’t live. Before he was born his tiny heart was out of control. Doctors had to slide a needle into the mother then into a vein in his little liver to inject a drug to slow down his galloping heart. He survived that procedure and many others he had, before and after he was born. What saved him was the love of his mum and dad. From the moment they discovered they were pregnant they loved that little battler. They loved him to life. It was because of that love that all those resources were used to save him.  Why did the grandpa write the letter? Because there maybe the time when the fifteen-year-old boy hears from mum and dad: “No, you are not going on a two-week-holiday with your girlfriend.” Like many other teenagers the boy may want to say: “You don’t love me. You are ruining my life.” Take the letter of your grandpa, my friend, and read what your parents did to you then, so hopefully you can understand what they are doing now. Or he may hear from his parents: “No, you are not going to do a pub-tour at midnight with you mates. You are home by 10pm.” Like many other teenagers the boy may want to say: “You hate me. You are alienating me from my best friends.” Take the letter of your grandpa, my friend, and read what your parents did to you then, so hopefully you can understand what they are doing now.
            My Dear fellow believers! That long Gospel we heard fifteen minutes ago is like the letter of the grandfather to his grandson. It is to remind us, when we doubt or question God that he has loved us to the moon and back or better to say he has loved us to the earth and back. If we dismiss that letter of our ancestors in faith: prophets and Apostles, we end up with simplistic answers to what happens to us and to the world we live in. Simplistic answers reflect only what happens in this head of ours, they don’t engage the others or God. Life and death are more complex. That’s why the question: where was God when people suffered requires the enlightenment of the Scriptures and meditation like we did at the beginning of this homily. So the answer we get is not our anger, fear or disappointment, but rather love, hope and faith.

In 1792, when the Government of the French Republic expelled or murdered the priests and bishops who were faithful to the Holy Father, in a tiny parish of Saint-Hilaire-de-Mortagne the parish priest Fr Paynaud told his parishioners before he was forced to leave: “Wherever I go, my heart will be with you and I will pray for you. Each Sunday, so long as I am able, I will say Mass, at this same hour for you.” Thenceforth, every Sunday, the faithful of would meet at 10am for the “invisible Mass.” When the officials of the Republic locked up the church the faithful went to the local cemetery. Asked by the officials what they were doing, a farmer Lumineau answered for them: “We are at Mass. Our priest promised us that he would say Mass for us, each Sunday, wherever he was.” “Imbeciles” – the enlightened republicans mocked them – “your priest is hundreds of kilometers from here and you think you are attending Mass?” “Prayer” – Lumineau answered – “goes more than hundreds of kilometers; it ascends from earth to Heaven.”
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! On this night we come together to enter the Most Sacred time of the Paschal Triduum, like that night in Jerusalem, when our Blessed Lord gathered his Apostles to celebrate the first Eucharist. He enabled them, and the generations of bishops and priests, to continue it through the ages to come. It wasn’t a spontaneous event though. In fact, as we read in the Gospel of St Luke, Jesus said: “I have longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” Christ thought it through. He planned it. He treasured it in his heart first. That meal in the Upper Room, on that night before his arrest, was planned and desired by Jesus as a means of togetherness and unity, a means of establishing and preserving the new community, the Church.
When our Oblate Founder St Eugene de Mazenod committed himself to evangelising the post-revolutionary France he ‘invented’ a prayer called Oraison. In order to have an Oraison three things are needed: the Blessed Sacrament, at least two people and silence. For 200 hundred years the Missionary Oblates day in and day out have been praying it not only to build their communities but also to be a quiet reminder to the whole Church that a Christian is the person who loves worshiping the Lord while being together with others. “I give you a new commandment; love one another as I have loved you.” These words of the Lord from the chant before the Gospel capture the essence of the Eucharist. Our relationship with God, which is always personal, intimate and vulnerable, we share with others when we come together. At the moment of such a profound union with Christ when we hear his Word and receive Holy Communion we allow others to be part of our communion with the Lord Jesus.
In our society which is so divided, which keeps searching for a means to be united, in the Church we celebrate our union with each other through the sacramental presence of the Lord Jesus.
I would like to encourage you when you are faced with the statement that it is not necessary to go to church, that one can pray on his own, to share with those who say that your joy, your passion, your appreciation for being given the blessing of worshipping at least once a week with other Christians.
In a few minutes we will have a simple but profound gesture of washing of the feet; the gesture which is also a prophetic insight which we offer to our fellow Australians. It is about how we deal with sin, human weakness etc. When I hear or read another story of a person who has fallen out of grace, about someone who is branded as disgraced it appears to me that these days we throw a party to celebrate someone’s fall; as if it made us feel better when we see the moral downfall of another human being. What Jesus offers us in the scene of the washing of the feet is a new way of dealing with sins of others. We are called to be servants of those who sin in a humble way, in a way that doesn’t humiliate a sinner but returns their lost dignity. Jesus spoke of a bath which is a symbol of baptism: “You too are clean” he said. So “we should throw off everything that hinders us, especially the sin that clings so easily.” How beneficial it is when fellow Christians by their prayers, their example and their kindness, wash the feet of their brothers and sisters who in their eagerness for Jesus have been slowed down by sin. Then the Church picks up her pace in the race towards the glorious day of the Lord’s return.

            Our Lenten renewal journey comes to its summit as we enter the Holy Week. If there are some people here who have been so preoccupied with avoiding lollies, grog, telly or Facebook (that those who are really strong)  that they have missed the journey the Holy Mother Church has taken us on over the last five weeks, let us look back on that sacred voyage.
With Jesus we went first to the desert where three times we echoed the Lord’s renunciation of the devil. Then the Lord invited us with his three Apostles to the Mount Tabor to contemplate his Transfiguration. There we professed his Divinity and echoed the first Pope in acknowledging that the faith we had in Jesus meant that we wanted to stay with him there. However in spite of our readiness to stay our Blessed Lord kept us moving. He didn’t take us to visit the Seven Wonders of the World though. Instead he took us to visit three people. Interestingly two were still alive (the woman of Samaria and the man born blind), one was already dead (Lazarus). With those three characters we came to appreciate Jesus from Nazareth as the living water, the light of the world and the Resurrection and the life. We did feel like on the top of the world. We did share with the Apostles the feeling that we made the right choice; that we belonged to something huge. This Jesus from Nazareth was an impressive figure. It was so easy to say to the people we met along the way, that we were Jesus’. We might have even felt superior to those poor creatures who didn’t belong to our group. We might have pitied them. We felt bigger by being part of the big story of Jesus.
Just before we began the final lap of our journey from Jericho (that’s a city near the Dead Sea and located 258 meters below sea level) to Jerusalem via the Mount of Olives which is more than 800 meters above sea level, Jesus opened the eyes of two blind men. We could easily put ourselves in the shoes of those two nameless blind people because the Jesus’ events we had seen before and Jesus’ teachings we had heard before allowed us to look at the world around us differently. We felt the successors. We felt in control. We thought we had known everything. We thought that we were the learnt ones.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! As we listen to the Gospel of Jesus’ entry to the Holy City of Jerusalem let us notice in the crowds those two nameless blind people from Jericho. That’s the final (and double) miracle of Jesus before his death and Resurrection. 1) Their sight returned and 2) they followed him. There was a tough ascent ahead of them, more than a thousand meters to reach the summit of the Mount of Olives. It was the first lesson of the final learning: following Jesus doesn’t mean that it is going to be easy and light.
The second lesson of the final learning which the Gospel offers is this: following Jesus is shattering, crushing and cataclysmic because following Jesus doesn’t stop on a cheerful and happy-clappy Palm Sunday. Prophetically Palm Sunday is also Passion Sunday, as in this world of ours, the world of sin and corruption, there is no happiness without suffering and loss. Even Jesus Christ, the Son of God emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave and became as men are, and being as men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on the cross.
That final lap of Jesus’, and ours, Lenten journey is going to be shattering. Like those two disciples on the way to Emmaus we will say: Jesus of Nazareth proved he was a great prophet by the things he did and said. That’s a summary of that first leg of the journey with Jesus, up to Palm Sunday.
Our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be sentenced to death, and had him crucified. Our own hope had been that he would be the one to set us free. Can you hear what they are saying? Our hope is shattered, it is gone. They are hopeless. That’s a summary of the second leg of the journey with Jesus, from Palm Sunday to Easter.
My Dear Friends! We could skip the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday night. We could skip the Good Friday Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion. We could even skip the shattering silence of the Holy Saturday. We could just turn up to Easter Sunday Eucharist. We could do that. But we cannot skip the loss, abandonment, suffering, misunderstanding, humiliation and death. That’s why in the name of the Lord Jesus, for God’s glory, for salvation of people and your salvation, I invite you to the Liturgy of the Paschal Triduum, the Three Sacred Days. Immerse your heart, mind, will, your whole being in the sacred events of Jesus’ Passover so that like the newly baptised you can emerge out of that profound sacrifice with a new heart, mind, will, with your whole being renewed so that you could enlighten others with the light of Resurrection.