Lessons from a bookstore: Homily for Sunday, April 19, 2026

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Dominicans love a bookstore. But more can be learned from a bookstore than the knowledge contained in books. A bookstore can also be a window into what people are seeking, just like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Readings for Today.

Lessons from a bookstore

Homily for Sunday April 19 2026

For a Dominican friar, a favorite location is a bookstore. We like books. Now, it is always risky to enter a bookstore. Chances are we might walk out with a book or two. That said, bookstores can provide us with view of the current state of our society.

While there is a particular interest for me of the religion section, philosophy and history, I also spend time looking at how much space the sections of the bookstore take up. Because it does not take much imagination to connect the size of the section with the state of culture.

What do I often find in a bookstore? Large sections are given over to religion, self-help, psychology, finding the perfect diet. In fact, so much of a bookstore is about finding meaning. But the challenge is that there is not any consensus about how to find meaning.

Take the section that deals with diets. What is it I learned from looking at the diet section? Well, basically, just about any diet can lead to perfect health. There are diets where a person can eat all the fat they want, whereas there are others where a person should never eat fat.

I even noticed a diet that says there is no general diet for people, but rather, each person needs to figure out their “diet body type” before they can know which diet will make them healthy.

What I took from this bookstore experience is that we are a culture where people are seeking to find meaning. The bookstore seems to reflect the desire to find the easiest solution to meaning. We sometimes see the same dynamic in finding a pill to solve all our ills. 

Certainly I am not suggesting medication has no value. What I am suggesting is that it is not easy to find meaning. In today’s gospel, we find two disciples who thought they had found meaning, became disappointed in what appeared to be failure. Where will they find meaning now?

They were convinced Jesus was the source of fulfillment. Because of Jesus their lives now had meaning. They believed that because of Jesus their lives could not be any more meaningful. Jesus was the Messiah. But the Messiah of God had been crucified. He died. How could the Messiah who was to free Israel be killed?

These people, Cleopas and another disciple, go back to what they know before. Back to searching for meaning. Back to trying to figure out what things are all about. Back to the life where fulfillment was missing.

The claim of the resurrection of Jesus is that meaning comes from faith. But we live in an age where it is difficult to discover what or who to have faith in. We live in a time where we just about anything can be presented as true, whether it happened or not.

This past week we saw this play out in the media. What became clear is that people on the left and the right do not see the role of the pope clearly. Let me cite some examples. 

When it comes to opinions about abortion, there are some who tend so say that religious faith has no place. Or, it has every place. When it comes to state positions about war and peace, there are some who suggest that any statement about what to do is about politics.

What becomes clear when we consider these two examples, we tend to seek to diminish positions by claiming they are about politics. We tend to say that moral statements made by the pope for example, can be dismissed by claiming they are political.

Despite being a head of state, the pope is not a political figure. The pope is the vicar of Christ, the one whose mission is to help Catholics, and all people of good will, to discover what leading a moral life means. It is the pope who defines what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. 

The pope is a man chosen by the Holy Spirit. The role of the pope is to help us to see what our faith requires of us. The Holy Spirit helps us in this understanding.

The gospel today means that we too walk on the road with Jesus. We too hear Jesus tell us about how the Word of God reveals himself to each one of us. Do we too feel our hearts burning?

There is no easy way to guarantee that we will find meaning in life. It is not in a pill, a book, or in someone’s tremendous idea. It is only to be found in Jesus. And it only becomes clear to us in the breaking of the bread.

It is the Eucharist that can make clear for each one of us to see what Jesus wants from us. It is only in the Eucharist that Jesus can make clear for each one of us what we should do. It is only in the Eucharist that Jesus can make clear for each one of us who we should become.

But as we saw this past week, not everyone understands our faith in Jesus. They see the world in different ways. When the pope challenges me on abortion or on war, he wades into politics. When the pope challenges me by saying something I do not like, I can dismiss it.

I end with the words of Pope Leo on the plane with the press. “There has been a certain narrative that has not been accurate in all of its aspects, but because of the political situation created when, on the first day of the trip, the President of the United States made some comments about myself. Much of what has been written since then has been more commentary on commentary trying to interpret what has been said.  

Just one little example: the talk that I gave at the prayer meeting for peace a couple of days ago was prepared two weeks ago, well before the President ever commented on myself and on the message of peace that I am promoting. And yet, as it happens, it was looked at as if I was trying to debate again the President, which is not in my interest at all. So we go on the journey, we continue proclaiming the Gospel message, and the text of the Gospel we have been using for the liturgies give a number of different, fantastic, beautiful aspects of what it is about to be Christian, of what it is about to follow Christ, of what it is about to promote fraternity, brotherhood, trusting in the Lord, but also looking for ways to promote justice in our world, promote peace in our world.

Are our hearts burning within us?

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