The Third Sunday of Easter
Sunday, April 19, 2026
St. James Cathedral (8:00am and 10:00am)

Watch this homily! (begins at 45:00)

My friends, as we gather on this Third Sunday of Easter, I wonder what we would say to the Risen Christ if he asked us today, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” Perhaps we would share what is happening in our personal lives - a particular struggle we are having with a family member or co-worker; a concern over a health problem; the shock we feel at the sudden death of a parishioner, as we have experienced at Immaculate Conception this past week; or something else that has us worried.
 
We would also more than likely share what is going on in our country and in our world, as we wrestle with the death and destruction caused by war. All of these personal and corporate struggles can cause us to be downcast like Cleopas and the other disciple on the road to Emmaus.
 
They were leaving Jerusalem brokenhearted. They were hoping that Jesus would have been the one to set Israel free from the oppression of the Roman government. But, Jesus had been executed, and now his body had gone missing and there was this story going around that he was alive.
 
Jesus listens carefully to their lament and the real confusion and pain underneath it. And then he responds with how God has worked through people and their experiences down through the ages, and how all of this pointed toward the culmination of that work in the coming of the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior.
 
As we struggle with our own personal and communal pain and confusion today, the Lord Jesus, the Risen Christ, continues to walk with us. And he accompanies us as he did those disciples on the road to Emmaus. He listens to us, to our experiences, our confusion, our pain, our broken hearts over the state of affairs in our country. And then he responds as he always has, by opening up the scriptures for us and reminding us of God’s fidelity and steadfast love.
 
As I reflect on this past week, that is what Pope Leo has done for us - for Catholics and non-Catholics; for believers and non-believers; for Christians and Jews and Muslims. The Pope has encouraged us to listen well to Jesus, who accompanies us on this journey, and to stay rooted in the Gospel call to peace and justice - a call that goes beyond religious affiliation or partisan politics. He has reminded us of God’s fidelity and unwavering call to be people of peace.
 
The Pope’s words have reassured us, just as surely as Jesus’ words reassured those disciples on the way to Emmaus. God is ever faithful, and as we sang in our responsorial psalm, we are confident that he will “show us the path of life.” He has done that, once and for all time in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. That path, as St. Peter tells us in today’s second reading, was revealed in this final time in Jesus whom the Father raised from the dead, so that our “faith and hope are in God.”
 
I am tempted, and perhaps many of us are tempted, at times, to lose sight of where our faith and hope should be placed. We can get preoccupied by the struggles of our lives and the life of our world. Jesus does not abandon us when we are lost in the pain and confusion of all this. Like he did long ago on the road to Emmaus, he walks along with us and listens to us.
 
And in our prayer, in our dialogue with the Lord, he calls us to remember God’s faithfulness. He calls us to remember who we are as his precious and beloved people. And, as his disciples, he sends us to remind others of his faithful love and care.
 
My friends, like those disciples long ago, we have an urgent message to share and we should make haste to share it. He is alive! He has been victorious over sin and death and violence and injustice. He has gained that victory, as Pope Leo reminds us, through a disarmed and disarming peace.
 
And he sends us from here to be instruments of his peace - a peace manifested in dialogue and respect for the dignity of every human life. This is where our faith and hope lie - not in more and more sophisticated weapons designed for the death and destruction of more and more people, but in the disarmed and disarming peace of the Risen Christ.
 
In a few moments we will come around the Table of the Lord, this sacred altar, to encounter him once again in simple gifts of bread and wine. May our sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ today plunge us, once again, into the Lord’s abiding presence in our lives and in the life of our world. And when we are sent from here at the end of Mass, may we make haste to share his peaceful, healing and life-giving presence with all we meet.

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni