WE FIND CHRIST TOGETHER
Author: FR. MICHAEL BYRON
April 28, 2019
Most of us,
when we hear the word “pilgrimage” in a religious conversation, think of a
journey to a particular place—maybe a town like Assisi, or a shrine like
Fatima, or an experience like the Camino Real in Spain. But it wasn’t until I was studying with and
living among Jesuits in their religious formation that I became aware of their
own required pilgrimage as part of their process of entering the full life of
that community. I learned that these
young men discern with their elders a destination where they will go, and are
then given $35 and a one-way bus ticket to get to that place, and a month to
figure out how to survive and to get back home. At first it sounded like a daring game of chance—or a cruel joke. But it has a very deep spiritual purpose,
which is why it is a necessary part of their religious formation—and why it’s
among the many reasons that I’m not a Jesuit.
Clearly
nobody could undertake a journey like that all alone. No one could survive. And yet, as far as I know, everybody does
survive. That’s the point. There’s no pre-arranged plan of where they
will travel, whom they will meet, how they will spend their days and nights,
and what will be the resources for their return trip. It’s an intensive course on how to become
dependent on God and the goodness of others—and how to be in solidarity with
all of those who live that way all the time through no choice of their own…the
homeless, the immigrant, the social outcast.
If you ever
have occasion to converse with a Jesuit, ask him about his pilgrimage. No two are the same, and some are astonishing
stories. When he is in the midst of that
experience, he either learns to find community and mercy, or he fails, or he
dies. Nobody finds God all by
himself/herself.
We have the
unfortunate experience today of being in a popular culture that tries very hard
to convince us otherwise—to say that religion is a very private thing, a
“Me-And-Jesus” thing—if in fact we choose to make it a thing at all. We are actually encouraged to believe that
the Christian life is able to be lived without reference to community, to
others, and especially to the poor. That’s just not true, and it certainly isn’t anything that one can read
out of the bible.
It is
important to take notice of the fact, on this 2nd Sunday of Easter,
that the risen Lord Jesus never appeared to anybody all alone, as he sometimes
did during his earthly ministry. And in
fact the surest way to mistake the truth of Christ alive was and is to try to
do it all by yourself. The gospel of
John tells us so today.
We hear
again the story of Thomas, the so-called “doubter.” He simply couldn’t believe that Jesus had
been raised from the dead, not because he was a cynic or an obstinately
distrustful person—after all, resurrection is a pretty unlikely story for
anybody to take in at first. No, it was
because, for whatever reason, Thomas had absented himself from the community of
fellow disciples on that 1st Easter night. He wasn’t there to see and to celebrate what
everybody else saw and celebrated. And
so he refused to accept the truth of Jesus alive. His frame of mind makes perfect sense for
one who was trying to understand things all by himself. Without community, we can’t do it, just as
Thomas couldn’t.
And Jesus’
response was not to seek out Thomas for a private revelation. No, it was to wait until Thomas came back to
join his brothers in communion, where he appeared again—and this time Thomas believed.
In the light
of a gospel like this, it should come as little surprise that people who—for
whatever reasons—are separated from the Christian community and especially from
the celebration of Eucharist—have a much harder time holding on to Easter faith. To look out over the state of the world and
of the institutional church these days, such as it is, the easy response is to
say “I will not believe until I can see the Lord himself.” And that is understandable enough. But it’s precisely here—in Eucharist and
community—that the Lord discloses himself! Here we are, as Christ’s body—wounded but very much alive. And we too are on pilgrimage together, ever
dependent upon God’s Holy Spirit and the compassionate mercy of our fellow
travelers. I guess the Jesuits have
something to teach us all. Who knew?!
We need each
other, not only for the most physical necessities of life, but in order to
recognize and affirm together the revelation of Christ in our midst. May we not wander away to try that on our own,
and may we be ever ready to welcome those who have tried and been disappointed
in doing that, and who now seek a welcome here. This is at the heart of Easter faith and Easter work.
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