Homily: Third Sunday of Easter
April 19, 2026
My dear brothers and sisters, as we celebrate the liturgy of the third Sunday of Easter, the readings of today like those of last Sunday continue to teach us valuable lessons from the post-resurrection experiences of the disciples of Jesus. We could see the crucifixion and death of Jesus was indeed a scandal to most of the disciples and there appeared to have been a dispersal of them after His death, the disciples gradually to their own ways away from the gospel message of Jesus. Last Sunday, we saw that Thomas was absent from the gathering of the brethren. This Sunday we are seeing two of the Lord’s disciples that proceeded to Emmaus, seven miles away from Jerusalem from where Jesus died. They were discussing how the bright hopes which they had entertained about Jesus have all crumbled because of the crucifixion of Jesus. From their tone of voices, one could see that they were dejected, discouraged, disillusioned and despondent.
In our own time, there might be many Christians who are on the way to Emmaus, moving away from Jerusalem, discouraged and disillusioned with life. The way the crucifixion of Jesus was a heavy blow to His disciples, many challenges in life can give us a deadly blow. Sometimes, in our time, we can watch a seeming triumph of evil and death. We can experience the unfortunate victory of injustice over honesty, where falsehood was accepted as truth, and imposed by those in power or those we are supposed to look up unto for positive directions. At other times, different factors in life, loss of job and joblessness, painful death of a loved one, broken marriages and so on are capable of turning our faces away from the heavenly Jerusalem and turning them towards Emmaus.
Brothers and sisters, the readings of today stand as beacons of hope for us. We should not attempt to make same mistake of these two disciples on their way to Emmaus, that is by removing ourselves from the worshipping community of brethren and preferring to find solutions to the dilemma of life by walking away from God. The meaning and hope of these two disciples were restored when they encountered Jesus and they made the great U turn immediately back to Jerusalem not minding the distance, not minding the darkness of the night.
We too must encounter Jesus the way the two disciples moving away to Emmaus encountered Him. We must encounter Jesus in the Sacrament of Penance, we must encounter Jesus in prayers, we must encounter Jesus reading and listening to the word of God, we must encounter Jesus in the participation and reception of the Holy Eucharist. If the challenges of life have geared our life away from God, we must courageously put the transmission in the reverse gear back to Jesus. If the risen Jesus thought it worth while to walk seven miles and spend about two hours in enlightening the minds and comforting the hearts of two humble disciples, if Jesus was content to spend a good part of the very first day He rose from the dead in taking a class for two persons and pouring His rich treasury of truth into their minds, we must know then that there is nothing Jesus cannot do for us if in humility and sincerity of heart, we seek Him.
In the first reading of today, we see a very touching example of a radical U turn to Jesus in the lives of the first disciples of Jesus. In Mt 26:40-41, Peter slept when Jesus took him and two other apostles to pray against temptation at Golgotha. In Mt 26:69-75, Peter successfully denied Jesus three times before a servant girl during Jesus’ crucifixion. The behavior of many of the other apostles seemed even worse because nothing was heard of them during the Crucifixion of Jesus which highly suggested that they all ran away at the ‘H’ hour. However, we read in the first reading of today, that after the resurrection, Peter standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd, men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem that Jesus is Lord and He is alive. What a superlative act of courage and firm determination! Like these two disciples who turned back to Jerusalem to testify that Jesus is alive, like Peter and the eleven, we must stand on our two feet to tell the world that Jesus is risen, that Jesus is alive and that Jesus is Lord.
