Telling the story, in the story

This is my homily from yesterday, the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.  The readings for the weekend (the Gospel passage is the Road to Emmaus story) are here.  In addition, if anyone is interested: at the time I am posting this, the recording of this past Sunday's mass, including my giving this homily (and doing all the usual diaconal stuff) is available here on our parish website; I suspect it will be replaced by the following weekend's mass recording by sometime this coming Saturday.  Here is the text of the homily:

When something exciting happens to us, it’s natural for us to tell others about it.  And when we tell others about exciting or important or traumatic events in our lives, we tend to tell them in the form of stories.

All of us are familiar with fictional stories: stories that have been created by an author, with characters and events that didn’t really happen.  But that’s not the kind of story I’m talking about here.  I’m talking about anecdotes.  I’m talking about the stories we tell of things that happened in real life to us or to others.

 I have a fund of stories from my own life, and I wish I had time to tell some of them now: how my wife Therese and I met; the night I proposed to her; our wedding day; the time we were caught in a hurricane on our honeymoon; the time I sprained my ankle while hurrying across Wacker Drive; the time our oldest child was born; and many stories besides that.  All of us have stories.  Some are uplifting, some are tragic:  the story of immigrating to this country; the story of discovering that a spouse has been unfaithful; the story of a mom’s fight against breast cancer; the story of shooting a hole in one.  We have countless stories to tell: of happy times, sad times, events that changed our lives.  

We hear a life-changing story in our first reading: Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, tells the story of what happened to Jesus.  He tells that Jesus performed mighty deeds, wonders and signs – for which was killed unjustly.  And then Peter tells something amazing: God raised Jesus up from the dead.  And then Peter tells that the Holy Spirit has been poured forth upon him and his followers.  Peter doesn’t tell everything about Jesus, but he told some important things, things which he thought his audience would want to hear or needed to hear.  It’s a great and wondrous story.  Peter proclaimed it in the immediate wake of the Pentecost event, so this scriptural passage which is our first reading is the record of the first time this story was told in public. 

It’s the story of the paschal mystery of Jesus.  And it’s been told ever since, for 2,000 years.  For two millennia now, that story has pulled us in, touched our hearts, changed our lives.  Through our baptisms, God pulls us into that story, too, and we become characters in it.  Jesus’s story and Peter’s story becomes our story.  We die with Jesus.  And we will rise with him, too.

Here is another thing about a true story: usually, we don’t tell a story about our lives until the events are in our past.  It’s when we look back on important or dramatic events that we can make sense of them and understand how to arrange them in our minds.  But it’s different when we’re still in the middle of the story.  When the events are still happening in the present, it’s more difficult to make sense of it.  For one thing, when the story is still happening to us, we don’t know yet how it’s going to turn out.  We don’t know if it’s going to be a comedy or a tragedy.  This helps explain, I think, why many people don’t speak up when bad things are happening to them.  When a wife is being abused by her husband, or a child is being bullied at school, or someone is miserable in a  job – when we’re in the middle of things like that, many of us don’t speak up because we don’t know how to put it into a story form.  It’s not ready yet to be told as a story, so we struggle to tell it.

We see an instance of this difficulty in our Gospel story.  The two disciples on the road to Emmaus are still in the middle of the story.  The events are too fresh and not yet complete.  In fact, they themselves are about to be pulled into the story as characters, although they don’t know that yet.  They do know Jesus has died, so it seems to them this story is a tragic one.  But puzzling new tidings from the women in their group have complicated that narrative, and possibly have sent the plot off in a new direction.  These two disciples don’t know yet what it all means.  It seems plausible that’s what they were discussing as they walked along: what does this mean?  Where is this going?  How is this going to end for us and our companions?

And then Jesus comes to them, and he helps them to understand what it means.  It’s a telling detail, I think, that even then, when they are literally walking with Jesus and dining with him, they still don’t fully understand it; it is only when he has disappeared from their sight and they look back on what has just happened that they realize their hearts were burning with gratitude, love and joy.  And it is only later still, when they hear further tidings from the disciples of Jesus' appearances, that it begins to make sense to them.

We’re in the middle of a story right now.  It’s called COVID-19.  We don’t know yet how it will turn out.  Our government leaders and public health experts tell us that the isolation and the mask-wearing and the handwashing and social distancing that we’re all enduring now is to “flatten the curve” – I suspect we’ve all heard that phrase by now.  The hope is that, sooner or later, the number of infections will start leveling off and even decreasing day by day.  This week, I recorded in a spreadsheet the daily number of new infections in Illinois, going back to March.  And each day this week, I’ve been adding the new daily infection number to the spreadsheet.  I’m also maintaining the data in a line chart, so I can see the curve for myself.  I want to see the curve flatten.  Charts and graphs transform a set of numbers into a story – a pattern that makes sense.  I guess you could say that I’m trying to understand where this story of COVID-19 is going, where the plot is taking us.  

Earlier this week, as I looked at my line chart, I was thinking that I could see the beginnings of a plateau – perhaps we’re entering the stage in the fight against the disease where the curve flattens.  But after the last few days this week, I’m not so sure; the number of new infections has been very high, and my line chart is continuing to rise, up and to the right.  I fear that we may be in this mode of existence for quite a while yet.  But the line could turn again, starting tomorrow.  We’re still in the middle of this story, so it’s impossible to know how it’s going to turn out.  Even the experts don’t know.

We’re still in the middle of the story of our journey with Jesus, too.  We don’t know how it will turn out.  I’ve heard stories of cradle Catholics whose faith fades away and dies, even on their deathbeds.  Those are tragic stories.  I’ve also heard stories of people who lived unfaithful lives for many years, and then had their lives transformed by faith – there are absolutely people like that at St. Edna.  Those are wonderful stories.  Our own stories these days are stories of being tested by COVID-19.  We don’t know yet how our stories will turn out.  But we should be encouraged to know that Jesus is walking beside us today on our journeys, even in the cramped quarters of the homes to which we’re confined.  He will help us get through this. Jesus still loves us, and is ready to set our hearts afire.