Emmaus Spiritual Director
I would like to invite you to take a few minutes and think about hope. Think about how Christ places the community in our care when we hear ‘Christ in counting on you’ and how we place the community and ourselves in Christ’s care when we say ‘I am counting on Christ’. While Jesus hung on the Cross, He placed his Mother into the care of the disciple, John, with ‘Woman, this is your son’. Jesus placed his disciple into the care of his Mother with ‘This is your Mother’. Sitting at the foot of the Cross, Mary herself symbolizes our community and where we have been over the past few years. In spite of what looked like a disaster and the end of everything, Mary continued to look to the future, to the final victory over evil, never giving up hope, always trusting in her Son. We, the Emmaus community, profess and proclaim the same hope, that in spite of all the hard struggles, the sufferings and set backs that we have experienced, these will seem as nothing when God’s glory is revealed to us as we move forward in obedience, trust and hope.
It is a joyful celebration as we serve and journey in Christ’s presence with Christ’s people. It is a great act of witness that we are trusting and serving to raise up disciples in Christ’s church. On our journey we are strengthened in our faith and in our hope by the love and prayers and examples of our brothers and sisters and those of that great band of Christian witnesses, the saints from the last two thousand years, who also accompany us. As we move forward as disciples of Jesus, let us journey as Mary did. Let us listen and respond to Jesus with obedience, faith, love, generosity and constancy. Let us serve Jesus in one another. Let us reflect in our lives the light of our faith in Him. Let us keep our gaze fixed on Christ as we make our journey through life and as we seek to serve Him in this world.
Grace and Peace,
Don Roser