Suppose you and I are walking along in the countryside, and a stranger starts to stroll along with us.

  “What are you discussing as you walk along?” he asks? We stop, dejected.

One of us, maybe you, says to him in reply, “are you the only person in the world who does not know of the things that have taken place during these years and these centuries?”

He replies, “What sort of things?”

You say, “we had promised to continue Christ’s works, to revere his presence, to preserve his love and to let it overflow through us to everyone.” You stare at the ground. “But now the Church is falling apart. So much is happening, including betrayal of the Church's mission.”

  “Betrayal?” the stranger says.

  “Yes. We found out that some of our own priests and even some Bishops have gone against the very mission they were sent to preach. And churches are closing in all the cities, and dioceses are going bankrupt! And hardly anyone is entering the priesthood now, so how are we going to have the sacraments?”

I gesture to you with a “calm down” motion, but you go right on talking.

  “We have crucified Christ all over again! Oh, we were hoping that he would make the whole world come right!”

  “How slow of heart you are to believe all that the prophets spoke,” he says quietly. “Is it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things even today and so enter into his glory?”

  “What do you mean?” you stutter. “Why should he suffer? And worse, why would he let all these horrors happen, in Ukraine and the South and, and, and, and ... ”

He raises his hand. He begins to tell us everything that refers to himself in the scriptures, beginning with Moses and all the prophets. His voice is very kind. He shows how God had endlessly sought a loving relationship with his people, and how these would agree for a while but then turn their backs and run away. Battles and wars, belief and unbelief, rich versus poor and sick, the very ones who are aching for love.

He tells us that there is only one way the human heart could say Yes to God and mean it.

One human being had to do it on behalf of us all, one who was human to the core and who could not refuse to remember God's love, even in the midst of mindless suffering and death. This one would be with the troubled people of the world, be with them in every pain and also every joy of their lives. God's love, he said, is stronger than death.

The stranger goes on with us and stays with us. He walks with human beings now, with a love so deep that we can always count on it, even if we are sinners. It is a love which strengthens us and sends us out. It is God's love.

You are calm now as we walk, and I am too. Maybe the resurrection did happen, you whisper to me so that the stranger cannot hear it. We both nod. We have recognized him. We see him in the breaking of the bread, but also and astoundingly in the breaking bones of the world.