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March 24, 2021By MICHAEL O’CONNELL
CFP Correspondent
Theologian Scott Hahn pulled a double shift at the 20th annual Worcester Diocesan Catholic Men’s Conference, entertaining a virtual audience with a pair of sessions focusing on spiritual journeys, a 1999 Hollywood supernatural thriller and God’s stance on the global pandemic.
The author of 23 books kicked off the morning program with a story from the Book of Luke chronicling a notable, impactful trek conducted nearly 2,000 years ago. The seven-mile journey, from Jerusalem to the small village of Emmaus, started with a pair of lowly laymen, Cleopas and his companion. They were joined by a third man, who listened to their concerns and read Scripture to them along the way.
The journey was notable for several reasons. The third man happened to be Jesus. The day was Easter Sunday, two days after Jesus had been crucified. Yet there he was, in the flesh, walking along with two laymen, who inexplicably did not recognize him during their journey. Only later, during lunch, as Jesus blessed the bread and gave them gifts, did the two men recognize him. Then he vanished.
Mr. Hahn said he chose to anchor his talk “The Road to Emmaus: The Path to Lifelong Conversion” with this tale because it displays Jesus’ selfless commitment to building the faith of even the most anonymous followers.
“I love this story for many reasons,” he told the virtual audience. “First of all, how Jesus chose to spend his first day back from the dead – Easter Sunday – for hours with two lowly laymen: Cleopas and his companion. You would think he would consider dropping in on Pilate and Herod and Annas and Caiaphas – but no! Well certainly he would spend the day with Peter and his other disciples, giving them comfort and consolation – but no! (He chose) these two men. They had this experience – the experience of a lifetime – where suddenly Jesus is transforming the despair, the darkness, the dismay, the depression into something that is almost too good to be true.
“It’s the truth of Easter Sunday – the truth of the Resurrection.”
In the late afternoon session, Mr. Hahn fast-forwarded to modern times to pull religious themes from M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 film “The Sixth Sense.” In the movie, a young boy named Cole shocks his psychologist with the memorable line: “I see dead people.” The people Cole sees wander around in a daze, not knowing they’re dead. Spoiler alert: Turns out Cole himself is dead, too.
“I can’t help but appreciate this movie because Cole is something of a Christ figure,” Mr. Hahn said. “I can almost imagine Jesus stepping out into our world and whispering similar lines: ‘I see dead people. They don’t know they’re dead. They only see what they want to see.’ Out in the streets, on the internet, Netflix. How often do you see them, Lord? ‘All the time. They’re everywhere.’
“In our world, there are, in effect, spiritual zombies who are quite alive physically, with human life that’s natural, but quite dead supernaturally,” Mr. Hahn added. “Devoid of this internal life – either because they haven’t been baptized or they’ve not gone to confession. To receive that resurrection that comes from absolution are not just the babblings of a clergyman. Those words – I absolve you – are like the words of consecration.”
In both talks, Mr. Hahn stressed that Catholics can gain fulfillment if they embark on their own spiritual journeys and commit to the faith, day after day, each in his or her own way.
“For us as Catholics, conversion is not something that’s over and done in the past,” Mr. Hahn said. “It’s ongoing. It’s life-long. But it also needs to be every day.”
Mr. Hahn brought the second talk up to the present – to the “darkness” that he said has enveloped society over the past couple of years.
“You think of evil times, you think of 2020,” he said. “The pandemic! The shutdown. All of the masking. We would think of all the chaos that followed with the presidential election. The deep divisions in our country that have been exposed. This has been a dark time. But I think the Lord is allowing it in order to shine the light and show us that so often his strength is made perfect in our weakness.”
Yet, he says, the same questions keep coming up: Is God is punishing us? Is COVID-19 a punishment from God?
“People usually assume that if God is punishing us, it’s God getting back at the world. When, in fact, that’s not the case,” Mr. Hahn said. “God is a father. And he punishes his children according to the covenant bond he made and renewed with us. Not to get back at us. But to get us back to him.”
