• It Is Through The Face That We Encounter God
• A Message of Hope
• Waiting
• An Octopus at Easter.
• Invite relationships
• Transformation
• This Moment
• A Good Story
• Can I Be A Healer?
• The virtue of doubt
• Mary Mackillop, Woman Of Faith
• Fridge Doors And The Rest Of The World
• Entertaining Angels
• More connected than ever, more disconnected than ever
• Feast of Teresa of Avila, 15th October
• The Witness of Maternity Leave
• Something New
• Farewell
• Australian Catholic University is a Public University Open to All
• What if God Was One of Us?
• Zest for life
• Attendance
• Christmas Angel Tree
• A Present For Me
• On being famous
• Reason To Celebrate
• World Youth Day
• May the evening's twilight find me gentle still
• Goodness: God’s Gift To Us
• A time for every purpose under heaven
• The Mad Dash
• The Positive Spirit is Fully Alive
• Its time to change
• Living an Abundant Life

3rd Sunday of Easter: Invite relationships, share stories, share meals.

The Gospel for this Sunday was the story of the disciples encountering a stranger on the road to Emmaus. It is a story of the proclamation of the Resurrection – the key to Catholic identity in all its forms.

The stranger asks the disciples what they are discussing and why they look sad. He invites them to share with him their story. They are invited into relationship. The disciples tell him of the events leading up to the Passion and Death of Jesus and of their hope that Jesus would have been the Christ. In their telling of the story they reveal their own lack of understanding of Jesus and it is the stranger who reveals to them the significance of the events they have witnessed. Even then the disciples do not recognise the stranger – it is only in the breaking of bread, in the sharing of a meal, that the true significance emerges. It is then that their eyes are opened and they recognise the stranger as the Risen One.

The Road to Emmaus story encapsulates the features of genuine evangelisation: an invitation to relationship, sharing stories and the sharing of meals. Each of these are hallmarks of Jesus’ own proclamation of the Kingdom and illustrate how the message of the Gospel is most effectively shared. This Gospel is a timely reminder that at ACU we too need to constantly reflect on our obligation to invite relationships, to share stories and to share meals with each other and those we serve. It is only in the context of such encounters that we too will recognise the Risen One who we exist to proclaim.

• Patrick McArdle,
• Theology,
• Canberra