St. Norbert's Church - Sunday Reflections

Stay with us, for it is nearly evening - this is the invitation of the disciples to Jesus. Only when He stays with them and then blesses and breaks bread and gives it to them do they finally recognize Him. Then He disappears.

This Sunday we can focus on this invitation of the disciples to the Lord. So often we focus on the Lord's relationship to us. We need to look into our hearts. Do we invite people to stay with us? In that inviting of others, we can meet the Lord. Surely this was an expression of Jewish hospitality and we can look at our own hospitality to others. Only in this openness to the other will we meet the Lord as He wants to be met.

The first reading today, from the Acts of the Apostles, gives us a picture of Peter giving witness to other Jewish people. He is with others. He is offering words that might open a new vista for others. He is like Jesus in the Gospel. The other people do not yet recognize that he is a special messenger from God. In this reading, it is a question of whether the hearts of the hearers are open. We also hear the same Scriptures. These Scriptures, just as to these early listeners, have become so well known that we often find nothing new in them. Often we do not even encounter the Lord in them because our hearts are dull.

The second reading, from the First Letter of Peter, tells us to conduct ourselves in such a way that it is apparent that we know God. This comes down to loving others once again, to listening to others, to asking others to stay with us so that we can encounter the Lord in them. So often we want to be away from various people, we want some people out of our lives and we want to love those who make us comfortable. This never denies that there are people who should not be in our lives because they draw us away from the Lord. Sometimes, however, we want people out of our lives because they are inconvenient for us. It all comes down, once more, to this: am I seeking God or just my own comfort.

The Gospel brings us back to the Emmaus experience: in listening the Scriptures, we can encounter the Lord. In listening to others who are the images of Scripture, we can encounter the Lord. In seeking to hear the other person, we might encounter Jesus Himself.

Stay with us, Lord, because it is almost evening! Our lives are finite and so it is always evening. The only value of this life, from a deeply spiritual point of view, is to encounter the Lord, to know the Risen Christ, to live in His love and to proclaim that love to all the earth. Amen. Alleluia.