Sunday, April 19, is the Third Sunday of Easter. Mass readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35.

In the Gospel, two discouraged and broken men make their way to Emmaus. The text describes them as “downcast.” Their Lord and Messiah has been killed, the one they had thought would finally liberate Israel. Some women had claimed that he was alive, but these disciples have discredited those reports and are now leaving Jerusalem. It is late in the afternoon, and the sun is sinking low.

They are also moving in the wrong direction, west, away from Jerusalem, away from the Resurrection. They have their backs to the Lord, rising in the east.

The men cannot see or understand God’s plan. They cannot “see” that he must be alive, just as they were told. They are quite blind to the glorious things that happened hours before. In this, they are much like us, who too easily have our eyes cast downward in depression rather than upward in faith.

How will the Lord give them vision? How will he reorient them, turn them in the right direction? How will he enable them to see his risen glory?

In the context of a sacred meal we call the Mass, he will open their eyes and they will recogize him.

The entire Gospel, not just the last part, is in the form of a Mass:

• There is a gathering, as two disciples are together walking on the road and Jesus joins them, for “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst.”
• There is a penitential rite, where the Lord noting their sadness, asks them to recount their struggles.
• There is a Liturgy of the Word, as the Lord recounts the Scriptures and explains their meaning.
• There is a Liturgy of the Eucharist, as they recognize Jesus in the “breaking of the bread.”
• And there is an ite missa est, as they run forth to tell what they have seen and heard.

In this Mass the Lord turns them around, back to the east, to the light and to the Resurrection. This is what Mass should do for us. It should properly orient us, open our eyes and fill us with joy and zeal. The celebration of Mass should set the entire vision of our life and increasingly form Christ in us.