This week it feels as if things should be returning to ‘normal’. Children are supposed to be going back to school, those early quick little holidays are over and after the stunning weather of the Easter weekend we should be going back to work, going back to school or slipping back into the everyday routine – whatever that was!
Routine can sometimes feel very dull. The everyday slog that simply ensures that one thing happens after another. But sometimes, in that routine we can miss something absolutely vital. So perhaps, we can look at this unusual time, this break in the routine to try to notice the unusual and the vital. Perhaps, with a great deal of effort we can look on this time as an opportunity to see Jesus where we haven’t seen Him before.
This Sunday’s gospel is the story of the two disciples – who utterly broken and bereft – have fled Jerusalem after the death of Jesus. In their dejection and upset they are joined by a man on their journey who knows nothing of the huge events that have just happened. They tell him the shattering story of the past few days and invite him to stay. They don’t recognise Jesus because they are so caught up in their own grief and pain (and who can blame them) and it’s not until Jesus breaks bread with them that they see his true face. It is a powerful example of how in our darkest and longest nights if we turn to Jesus and open our hearts to Him, He will take us up and comfort us.
We continue in these unusual days to search for Jesus in the different routines that have developed. In the new ways of living and being that none of us invited into our lives, but with which – none the less – we now have to grapple.
We don’t do this alone (just as the disciples on the road were never alone), we do it as a community of Christians – praying, loving and caring for one another in the only way we know how – the way Jesus taught, and continues to teach us.
We miss you all a great deal, we pray for the day we are physically re-united – but until that day know that we continue to pray for you and that we continue to break bread with Jesus every single day – in your name, and for your journeys.
With all my love,
Fr. Matthew
- Read this weeks Pew Sheet (from St. Mary’s, combined prayer lists)
- Read this weeks Readings and Sunday Message