Homily for the Sunday Mass of April 19

Sunday, April 19, 2026
3rd Sunday of Easter – Year A
Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

First reading: Acts 2:14, 22b-33
Psalm: 15 (16),1-2a.5,7-8, 9-10,11
Second reading: 1 Peter 2:1,17-21
Gospel: Luke 24:13-35

Today's readings lead us to hear the affirmation of two necessities:
"It was not possible for death to hold the Lord Jesus in its power,"
first statement.
Second statement: "Did not the Messiah have to suffer all this in order to enter
in his glory?
The first statement in Peter's speech: "God has raised Christ from the dead."
Jesus, by delivering him from the pains of death, for it was not possible for it to...
"holds in his power," makes us contemplate the reality of the divinity of Jesus.
He is the eternal Son of the eternal Father who became man, and this communion
intimate as God is, this Trinitarian communion of the Father and the Son cannot be
broken. Through his death, Jesus will enter the furthest point, one might say.
To say, in relation to God: the abode of the dead where nothing happens anymore. But there
enters into this intimate communion with the Father, and through this communion with
The Father, the Father can resurrect, bring forth again, the human life of Jesus, the
human life of the eternal Son who became man… No, it was not possible that
Death holds the eternal Son made man in its power.
But why did the Messiah have to suffer all this to enter into his glory?
This statement by Jesus takes place on the road to Emmaus, in this
dialogue with the two disciples who return home dejected. And this
Jesus' statement will continue with a long discourse. We are told
Emmaus is a two-hour walk from Jerusalem… we have time
to listen to the Lord.
But immediately a question arises: why didn't the disciples have
As soon as it was written down, did you take some notes on this teaching of Jesus?
Why does Luke not tell us anything about this teaching which was supposed to be when
even be something extraordinary? Jesus, who takes back all the
Holy Scriptures to help understand the Paschal Mystery. And even the same
Saint Luke, at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, tells us that for 40 days
After his resurrection, Jesus spoke to the apostles about the Kingdom of God. And he did not
This discourse of Jesus tells us absolutely nothing!
It is because we are all disciples of Emmaus. We are
all are contemporaries of the Risen One, since he makes himself present in our lives: I
I am with you always, to the very end of time. The Lord Jesus continues
to comment on the Scriptures to all generations through the liturgy of
the Church, through the teaching of the apostles which is continued by the ministers
ordained of the Church. At this moment, through the mouth of the poor sinner that
I am, by the sacrament of Holy Orders which I have received, it is the Lord who speaks to you.
The Lord never ceases to speak to us about the Holy Scriptures so that we
Let us enter into its mystery. And we need time: we need time to
to understand with the heart that the Messiah had to suffer all this in order to enter
in his glory.
Perhaps Thérèse can help us a little… We find at least
two references to the disciples of Emmaus in what she writes that can help us
To clarify. In manuscript A, we read the following:
Jesus [said]: “I am preparing my kingdom for you as my Father has prepared me
prepared it.
It is at Saint Luke's house, Thérèse comments:
That is to say, I have crosses and trials in store for you, that is how
you will be worthy to possess this kingdom after which you
Sigh; for it was necessary that Christ should suffer and that he
He entered into his glory through this channel, if you wish to have a place at his side.
Drink the cup which He Himself drank!… (MsA 62v)
And this question is not so clear-cut, since the following year, in a
In a letter to her sister Léonie, she wrote:
[In heaven] we will understand the price of suffering and hardship,
Like Jesus, we will say again: "It was truly necessary that
"Suffering tested us and led us to glory." (LT)
186 of April 11, 1896)
Thérèse specifies that in heaven we will understand.
Let's try to dig deeper: we don't like suffering and we
we seek to avoid it at all costs. And when we frequent Saint Teresa of
The Infant Jesus, she regularly returns to this question of suffering.
At the age of 16, she wrote to her sister Céline:
Let us not believe that we can love without suffering, without suffering greatly…
Our poor nature is there! And it's not without reason!… It's our
Wealth, our livelihood!… It is so precious that Jesus came
on the land expressly to possess it. (LT 89 of April 26, 1889)
Why can't we love without suffering? For two simple reasons,
It's because the one I love is a poor sinner who doesn't do everything right and who
is sometimes unbearable… and I, who seek to love, am well aware of it.
my heart tells me that I don't always manage to do the good I want and that I
Sometimes it does evil that I do not want (cf. Rom 7:19). And that also causes me suffering.
And if I want to love in truth, I can only love with my poor nature.
of a sinful man, and I love someone who isn't always lovable… that makes us
It causes suffering. It causes us suffering if we seek to persevere in love.
But if we slam the door and turn our backs, we avoid the
the suffering of love. If, however, we still seek to love, then
This love is a source of suffering.
Thérèse doesn't like suffering. One could say she loves to love. She writes to
another of her sisters, Marie du Sacré-Cœur, a little later than the letter
previous to Léonie:
If you desire to feel joy, to have an attraction to suffering,
It is your consolation that you seek, since when one loves
One thing is certain: the pain disappears. […]
If you love suffering for its own sake, you are only hurting yourself.
search. What Thérèse likes about suffering is that then she can
to truly express one's love.
Oh my dear Sister, I beg you, understand your little girl,
Understand that to love Jesus, to be his victim of love, the more one
The weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more suited one is to the operations of
This consuming and transforming Love. […]
It is trust, and nothing but trust, that must guide us.
To Love… (LT 197 of September 17, 1896)
And I would add, who can shed some light on this, in another letter to Céline, to
When Thérèse was 16 years old, she told him:
The grain of sand wants to get to work, without joy, without courage.
without strength, and it is all these titles that will facilitate his undertaking, he
wants to work for love. (LT 082 of February 28, 89)
Didn't the Messiah have to suffer all this in order to enter into his glory?
In heaven we will truly understand. But what we can hear
Today, the Risen One is particularly evident in times of trial.
It is in suffering, in pain, that we can best express our
love; for true love does not seek itself, it does not serve itself
the passage from the joy of loving someone lovable: true love
It gives even to the one who is unlovable. True love makes me renounce
I myself will take up my cross and follow Jesus on his path of life! We
we will never fully understand this statement of the Lord: Was it not necessary
Not that the Messiah suffered all this to enter into his glory? But we
can hear him and agree to follow Jesus on that path
In the days to come, when we are in the midst of this ordeal, when we
We will be in pain when we are before someone we owe.
difficult to welcome, to accept, to take as he is, someone who seems to us
profoundly unpleasant, let us remember that we are ourselves
“Enemies” of God through sin — this is not my assertion, it is holy
Paul in the letter to the Romans (5:10) — and that in this situation, Jesus tells us
He loved each of us so much that he gave his life for us.

So when we find ourselves in these situations, by uniting ourselves inwardly to
The Risen Jesus, present, let us seek to love as he did, let us seek to
To manifest this charity that the Holy Spirit unfolds in our hearts, let us seek to
to be in the world the loving presence of the Risen One.
Then we will be able to exclaim with the psalm:
You are teaching me the path of life:
In your presence, overflowing joy!
To your right, an eternity of delights!

Amen.