A story is told of a rabbi whose grandson was playing hide and seek with another child.

The child hid

himself so well that his friend found it difficult to find him. And after having hid for some time, he
realized that the other child has stopped looking for him. And so the kid unhid himself and ran to his
grandfather and cried. “I was hiding but no one was looking for me,” he lamented. “My child, that is
exactly how God must feel,” his wise grandfather said. “God hides but no one seeks Him.”
God hides but no one seeks him. Is it true that many have grown tired of seeking the Lord that they
have completely stopped looking for the Lord? Or is it rather that we do desire to see him and the search
goes on because we do not recognize the Lord whenever he shows himself to us?
In today’s gospel two of Christ’s disciples were making their way back home to Emmaus from
Jerusalem, talking about all that had happened in the recent days, disappointed and downtrodden
perhaps. And then Jesus himself walks the way, by their side, but as Luke puts it, “something prevented
them from recognizing him.” And what was that something?

Unexpected death hits all of us, with a disheartening sadness. Yes, disheartening, as in our hearts are
taken away from us, torn out and broken. Today, as we lay our dear Marjorie, Tita Marj or Manang Marj
to many or even Nanay Marj to others, we still cannot fully take in the reality even as we carry out
funeral rites this morning. We perhaps feel the sort of shocked confusion and the agonizing
disappointment that the two disciples in today’s Gospel felt: “Our own hope had been that he would be
the one to set Israel free,” they said.
Our own hope had been …. We also had hoped, and even taken for granted, all sorts of other things.
Tita Marj had a place in many of our plans and expectations. Tita Marj:
 We at the parish would have wanted you to resume your loving and patient teaching of those
preparing for their first holy communion, especially the kids
 Many lectors and commentators would have wanted to continue to receive both coaching and
advising from you
 And with Tito Manny, we were looking forward for the two of you to once again prepare couples
for marriage
 For some of us, we had wanted your maternal care especially in times when we feel abandoned
by family and friends
 And still for some others, we would have wanted your advice when we seem lost and
overwhelmed by the problems and challenges life throws upon us.
Tita Marj, we had hopes to go on trips with you, to lose ourselves in spiritual conversation, to share a
meal in fellowship, or to simply waste time with you. We would have wanted to receive more of your
maternal care, your patient coaching, your faithful companionship, and your assuring presence. Like the
disciples, we do not understand, yet like them, we somehow want to hope. We know that we still can
and must hope. The original followers of Christ had to learn that the overturning of their plans and
expectations, even the death of the person on whom they had pinned so many of their hopes and dreams,
need not be the end of everything. And it is not the end of everything for God continues to write the
story.
God’s ways are not our ways. He calls us along paths we would have never chosen for ourselves.
And when he does call us, he asks us to patiently wait as the story continues to unfold; he asks us to
courageously trust that all things will work out well towards the good. And eventually they realized that
it was necessary that even the Christ should suffer. Because God’s plans are greater than ours, our
own expectation need to be shattered and our own desires need to be frustrated. At times like this,
we feel helpless. We feel the profound pain and sorrow of the writer of our first reading today who
laments:
 My soul is shut out from peace;
I have forgotten happiness.
And now I say, ‘My strength is gone, that hope which came from the Lord’.
Brooding on my anguish and affliction is gall and wormwood.
My spirit ponders it continually and sinks within me. (Lamentations 3)
We are helpless in the face of death, and in that helplessness we clearly see the fragility of our
desires, of our dreams and of our expectations. If everything depended on what we could achieve and
what we could ensure, we would be lost. There are tragedies, like sudden and unexpected death, which
we can do nothing to prevent. Yet we believe that God’s love never ceases and we can still hope. As
Paul writes to the Romans:
For I am certain of this:
neither death nor life, no angel, no prince,
nothing that exists, nothing still to come,
not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing,
can ever come between us and the love of God
made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Rabbi Caryn Broitman says that, “Among the most profound teachings of ancient religious
traditions has been that life at its most meaningful, truthful, and faithful, goes beyond what is
immediately observable; and the task of the person of faith is to seek what is hidden, to be sensitive to
what is concealed, and to be open to what may be revealed.”
After the disciples have spoken out their frustrations and disappointments, Jesus tells them, “You
foolish men! So slow to believe the full message of the prophets! Was it not ordained that the Christ
should suffer and so enter into his glory?” And as Luke relates, Jesus “explained to them the passages
throughout the scriptures that were about himself.”
While we do not still understand why things have to happen this way, we trust that the Lord will do
the same for us: walk beside us and share in our sorrow and confusion and enable us to see what lies
beyond what is immediately visible, to what lies behind our unbearable pain.
We are people who wait. We wait for what God will do in his own way and at his own time. Yes, we
may be waiting in confusion and bewilderment and grief, but still we wait in hope. Even the suffering of
Christ was necessary. The sorrow we have to bear at the moment is necessary. The disciples could not
understand it; we cannot understand it either. However, we wait, knowing that we will never fully
understand until we are reunited with Tita Marj and with one another in the glory of Christ.
Meanwhile, we take to heart the final lines of our first reading today:
The Lord is good to those who trust him, to the soul that searches for him.
It is good to wait in silence for the Lord to save. (Lamentations 3)
Tita Marj, you have relentlessly sought the Lord and now have been rewarded with finding the Lord.
Rest now for you have been a good and faithful servant of the Lord. It is now your turn to hide and we
ask you, please do not hide yourself so well. Make it easy for us to find you—in the events in our life, in
our fond memories of you, and in our dreaming of what could have been with you. And in the times that
we manage to find you, please continue to show us the Christ that you have found, something you have
always done for us in your lifetime.
Eternal rest grant unto Marjorie, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. And may her soul
and the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in your peace, O Lord. Amen.