Third Sunday of Easter

Cycle B.

Homily April 14, 2024.

Acts 3:13, 17-19; 1 Jn 2:1-5a; Lk 24:35-48.

 "Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of bread"

We are already on our third Sunday of Easter, and the liturgy deepens about how is our resurrection experience. Let me ask you, what do people experience in their daily lives? Everybody indeed has a different context and lifestyle. However, always there is a motivation in ourselves to live. Mostly we don’t hear people talking about one sense or motivation of life from God. Possibly we hear as mass media encroach us with ideas that distance us from a true sense of life. Even, society offers many different ideas about anything, such as excessive self-care, richness, and popularity. Many people are into those things, and making a sense of life. Not everything from our society or mass media is indeed bad, however some things could turn aside from the correct focus.

Today, we continue to listen to the resurrection experience of the disciples in the Gospel of Luke. They also had a lost focus after of death of Jesus and their motivations were at rock bottom. But, the Gospel reminds us that in the middle of the crises they experienced Jesus. As we have listened on those easter Sundays, Jesus appears to them saying: “Peace be with you.[…] Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?” Those questions suggest that the resurrected wants to bring a new sense of their lives because he knows they were discouraged.

Brothers and Sisters, in the Gospel today there is a deep teaching about the source of sense of the disciples. The text suggests that the appearance of Jesus happens during the disciples gathering. When both of them recounted how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of bread and sharing the scriptures. That shows how the disciples celebrated the Eucharistic and the word of God. These two practices indicate how the sacraments and the word of God are strongest.

We learn today from the disciples that in the word of God and the Eucharist we have two big sources for finding the resurrected. But when we are already filled from this water we should bring it to the others. As soon as the disciples touched and saw Jesus their life had changed. Jesus said to them: “My name will preach to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem”. We can verify Christ’s command in the first reading such as when Peter is preaching to him in Jerusalem. It invites us to go to preach Jesus, to talk about our experience with him. Let us touch Jesus like the disciples, but we should touch him in the most poor and needy. Because the resurrection is an experience, we can begin at our Jerusalem, which means in our ordinary place.

On the other hand, when we already found Jesus, our style of life should reflect such experience. The second reading reminds us that:” Those who say, -I know him-, but do not keep his commandments are liars, and the truth is not in them.” Dears let us keep with the Lord, although society has other attractive things for us, Jesus is the best experience. Let us keep with the Lord because “whoever keeps his word, the love of God is truly perfected in him”.