‘Have you anything here to eat?’ Sunday Reflections, Third Sunday of Easter, Year B

Supper at Emmaus (detail), Caravaggio [Web Gallery of Art]

The two disciples told what had happened on the road, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:35).

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Luke 24:35-48 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition)

The two disciples told what had happened on the road, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

St John Paul II skiing in 1984

Both St John Paul II and I skied, though never together. He skied most of his life, managing to 'escape' even when pope to do so. My career was limited to one glorious day early in January 1969 in Toggenburg, near Syracuse in Upstate New York. If I could re-live one day in my life that is the one I would choose. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, the air was crisp and clean and I remember devouring mandarin oranges and laughing for about ten minutes when I fell off the 'T-bar' - an inverted 'T' that carried two passengers, one on each side of the bar - while going back up to the top of the beginners' slope.

I had been ordained less than 13 months before and was studying music in Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York, north of New York City, run by the Religious of the Sacred Heart. One of the students, Regina McGann, invited me to spend some days with her family in Jamesville, near Syracuse. She came from a large family and her parents, Harold and Mary, made me feel most welcome. 

If I could re-live that wonderful day of skiing it would have to include the family meal that evening in the McGann household - or any of the evenings I was there. We sat around a big round table and there was no rush. The emphasis wasn't on eating but on enjoying a family meal together. The McGann Family was for me a great example of the truth of Fr Patrick Peyton's slogan, The family that prays together stays together. Father Peyton used a copy of Murillo's painting below in his Family Rosary Crusade.

Virgin and Child with a Rosary, Murillo [Web Gallery of Art]

The McGann Family prayed the Rosary every night except Sunday, when the prayed Compline, the Night Prayer of the Church. This practice went back long before Vatican II, which encouraged lay people to pray parts of the Breviary, The Prayer of the Church.

But what I learned from this wonderful family is that The Family that eats together stays together. As an adult I came to see that it was through our family meals while growing up that I had experienced most of all being part of a family. The only time we were all together was in the evening. And Sunday dinner, in the early afternoon, was always something special, as it was for every family that I knew.

Today's gospel opens with the two disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus recount how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. They had invited Jesus to dine with them and that is how they discovered who their companion on the road - whom they had invited to join them - really was.

And to show the disbelieving apostles and disciples that he is not a ghost Jesus asks, Have you anything here to eat? 

During the Easter Season we also hear at Mass gospel readings from John 21 the chapter that includes the scene of the extraordinary catch of fish, some of which Jesus, the Risen Lord, cooked when he said,Come and have breakfast (John 21:12). After that meal he asks Peter three times, Simon son of John, do you love me?

This is a moment of great intimacy when Peter discovers that it is as his beloved friend that Jesus give him his mission - Feed my lambs . . . tend my sheep . . . feed my sheep.

It is clear from these gospel readings, and from many others, most especially the accounts of the Last Supper, that God reveals himself to us in the intimacy of a meal. If the family meal or meals with close friends are not part of our lives, how can we understand the meal aspect of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? In the Mass, in which we unite ourselves with the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, he gives himself, the Risen Lord, body, blood, soul and divinity, as so many of us learned when we were young, as the Bread of Life. It is not a symbol of himself that he gives in Holy Communion, but his very self, carrying the scars of Calvary and giving us the strength to do the same.

But he also reveals himself to us in our ordinary meals, sometimes even over a cup of tea or coffee. I remember one person who was close to me who for many years had carried a resentment towards someone now dead, a resentment that was the result of a painful incident. She recalled what her father, long since dead, had said to her many years before: Never carry a grudge against anyone. Over that cup of tea she finally let go of her self-inflicted pain, forgave, and moved on with a new lightness in her heart. I have no doubt whatever that it was Jesus the Risen Lord who spoke to her that day through the words of her father. It was a kind of Resurrection experience, over a cup of tea.

Even when we're not talking about profound things at a meal, when we see them as occasions when we most experience our humanity, when we see the link between the family or community meal, or a meal to which we invite someone living alone, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we can more readily understand the implications of the closing words of today's gospel, You are witnesses of these things.

The simple Grace Before and After Meals can remind us gently of the presence of the Risen Lord at our table, as truly present as he was at the table in Emmaus, as truly present as he was when he asked the apostles, Have you anything here to eat?

Prayer Before the Meal, Adriaen Jansz van Ostade [Web Gallery of Art]

 Responsorial Psalm [NAB Lectionary, Philippines, USA]

An Emmaus experience in Dublin

The Supper at Emmaus, Velázquez, c.1690 [Web Gallery of Art]

This morning after Mass two men, both in their 60s, came to see me in the sacristy. I'll call them Luke and Mark. Luke knows my brother and introduced himself as such before introducing me to Mark, who had once been a professional footballer. Luke told me that they had come to know each other through their common widowerhood.

Luke also told me that he had been away from the Church for more than 20 years but decided to go to Mass on Ash Wednesday this year. Afterwards Mark said to him, 'Welcome back!' Luke didn't quite understand at first that Mark was aware that he'd been away from the sacraments for a long time and he was welcoming him back to the Catholic Christian community.

Since then Luke has been going to Mass every day, as does Mark, and his joy was evident.

It was through welcoming Jesus to join them on the road to Emmaus and later to supper when they arrived there that the two disciples came to recognise the Risen Lord. I don't know what prompted Luke to go to Mass on Ash Wednesday but the welcome he received from Mark has led him to throw in his lot again with the Church.

I've been home in Dublin only a few days. There are many things in contemporary Ireland that discourage me but the Road to Emmaus is still there and individuals walking on it are still helping others to discover or re-discover the Lord by the simple act of welcoming them.

'We will come to him and make our home with him.' Sunday Reflections, Sixth Sunday of Easter Year C

The Holy Trinity, Unknown Russian Icon Painter, 1690-17-10 [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel John 14:23-29 (Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition)

Jesus said to his disciples, "If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.

"These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, 'I go away, and I will come to you.' If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe. 

The late Bishop Bienvenido S. Tudtud of Marawi, Philippines, (above) visited my Dad (below) in Dublin some time in the early 1980s. As it happened, Dad was about to leave for the wedding of a cousin of mine but he was able to entertain his unexpected guest for a while. Later on he told my brother, 'The bishop made me feel at home'. My brother laughed and said to him, 'You were the one supposed to make him feel at home!' But my Dad was always himself no matter whose company he was in and so was Bishop Tudtud, whose Christian name is the Spanish for 'Welcome'. They were both to die suddenly in 1987, Bishop Tudtod in a plane crash in the Philippines on 26 June and Dad at home on 11 August, from a heart attack. He had been at Mass that morning, as he had been every day of his adult life. The photo below was taken the week before his death.

My father hadn't expected Bishop Tudtud. But he made him feel welcome. The bishop felt free to just turn up because I had worked with him and had asked him to drop by my Dad if he had time. I have found over the years that there are friends' homes to which I need no invitation. These are friends with whom I truly feel at home and who feel at home with me.

Sometimes we feel fully at home with someone whom we have just met. Sometimes that being at ease with each other comes after being together many times, maybe through working together.

In the gospel of this Sunday's Mass Jesus makes the extraordinary statement, If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

The Father and Jesus are not only coming for a visit but to make their home with us. And the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Counselor/Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will come and will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. 

Fr Anselm Moynihan OP, an Irish Dominican friar who died in 1998, wrote a short book in 1948 about the Blessed Trinity living in our hearts, The Presence of God. Here is an extract: Awareness of God, whether it come to us thus by a dazzling rending of the heavens or through the gentle whisper of his voice in our conscience, is at the beginning and end of our spiritual life, at the beginning and end of all religion.  It is the root of what is truly the most radical division of mankind, one to which Holy Scripture constantly reverts, that between the 'wise' who keep God before their eyes and the 'fools' who ignore him.  The first awakening of the soul to God's reality brings with it that fear of the Lord which is the 'beginning of wisdom'; the end of life should bring with it the 'wisdom of the perfect,' the fruit of charity, whereby a man will experience God's living presence within himself and be filled with longing for that full awareness of God which is the vision of his face in heaven.

Supper at Emmaus, Hendrick Terbrugghen, c.1621 [Web Gallery of Art]

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus invited Jesus to join them and they pressed him to have supper with them at the inn, as it was getting dark. It was through their welcoming him that they discovered who their unknown companion was, the Risen Lord. And in the intimacy of the breaking of the bread when they recognised him and he disappeared from their sight, they felt his presence even more strongly, even more intimately. He was now dwelling in their hearts, just as he dwells in ours, with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

'Were not our hearts burning within us . . .' Third Sunday of Easter

Landscape with Christ and his Disciples on the Road to Emmaus, Jan Wildens, 1640s

Readings (New American Bible, used in the Philippines and USA)

Gospel Luke 24: 13-35 (NAB)

That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.

He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They stopped, looking downcast.

One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?” And he replied to them, “What sort of things?” They said to him, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see.”

And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures.

As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.

With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread.

Supper at Emmaus, Hendrick Terbrugghen, c.1621

In Terbrugghen’s painting the disciple on the right grips his chair as he rises, recognizing Jesus. His companion is looking across at him as if asking ‘Is it really the Lord?’ Jesus is looking beyond the two, perhaps looking out at all whom he died for and to whom he wants the Good News of his Resurrection preached. Is he asking each of us as he looks straight at us, ‘Do you too recognize me? Will you “go to Jerusalem” and further afield to share this recognition with others?’ His face too carries the wrinkles that come with age and suffering, though they’re not the wrinkles of old age. A friend commented on last Sunday’s Reflections, ‘Let wrinkles be written on your face but not in your heart’.

When Jesus disappeared from their sight the two disciples didn’t feel the slightest distress. Rather, they recognized what had been happening as they walked along with Jesus earlier: ‘Were not our hearts burning within us . . .’ They immediately set out for Jerusalem, even though it was night, because they could not contain their excitement and joy.


These two were among the very first missionaries. When I entered the Columbans in 1961 our Constitutions were in Latin. I remember one phrase vividly, ‘sine more proficiscar’, to ‘set out without delay’ to whatever mission you were given. This is exactly what the two did.


There is no sense of missing Jesus, of nostalgia, rather a conviction of his living presence even though he had disappeared from their sight. It is this same conviction that drives our Christina lives, that enables us when we come through a painful experience to see its life-giving meaning.


The experience of the two disciples reminds me to some extent of how I discovered God was calling me to be a Columban priest. It wasn’t a sudden event, such as what happened at the supper in Emmaus. But it was a conviction that one day I recognized and realized had been growing quietly for some time. ‘Were not our hearts . . .’ And while at one level what happened at the supper was sudden, it was a moment of revelation showing the meaning of all that had gone before, not only on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus but everything since Creation itself.


The two disciples invited Jesus to join them on the road and prevailed on him to stay with them in the inn. When Jesus was about to be born there was no room for him in the inn. This time there was, because these two honest men welcomed him and in doing so made it possible for Jesus to reveal himself to them.


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The Entrance Antiphon or Introit for this Sunday is from Ps 65:1-2 (Ps 66 in most versions of the Bible). The Latin text is: Jubilate Deo, omnis terra, alleluia: psalmum dicite nomini eius, alleluia: date gloriam laudi eius, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia - Let all the earth cry out to God with joy; praise the glory of his name; proclaim his glorious praise, allelulia. Here is a setting in Gregorian chant sung by the Schola Gregoriana Mediolanensis, Milan. It uses ‘universa terra’ instead of ‘omnis terra’.



Here is a Taizé chant using the words Jubilate Deo, omnis terra, servite Domino in laetitia. Alleluia, Let all the earth cry out to God with joy; serve him with delight.