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It seems I’ve been on the road to Emmaus since January! Back then, I gave a talk to a group of 65 men on retreat for the weekend, a talk entitled, “Emmaus in January: Recognizing Christ Breaking Open Our Lives in His.” Whew! What a long title!
Since then I’ve simplified things a bit, down to “Emmaus on Street Corners,” or something like that.
If we look at the gospel story by this name (Luke 24: 13-35), we can quite easily divide it into three parts.
The first part I call “Systems Failure”, and it runs from verse 13 to verse 24.
In this part, the Stranger who comes up and walks alongside the two grieving disciples provokes them to share with him what they had been discussing together as they were walking along.
Their downcast faces already reveal the state of their souls, which are wrapped in sadness and bitter disappointment.
We perhaps do well to pause at this point and to meditate for a moment on whatever sadness or bitterness we might presently be carrying. Perhaps it is a personal grief. Perhaps it is sorrow over the direction of governments or the state of the Church in whatever country we live. Perhaps it is a combination of all of these.
I’ve discovered I have feelings not unlike those of the two disciples about an encroaching illness (Parkinson’s) and its effects, about certain government decisions (legalization of drugs) and about the Church (abuse of priestly trust, for one thing), not to mention concern for so many struggling souls. And so forth.
Of course, the disciple Cleopas does not need to meditate; he is already overflowing with what is troubling him. And what is troubling him is this: he is disappointed in Jesus Christ. He had been hoping that Jesus would be the one to set Israel free at last.
He had been hoping for the long-awaited coming of God’s kingdom. It had all looked so promising. For a time.
But then the usual earthly powers had exerted themselves once again, and all they were left with was some vision of angels and a message of resurrection, just as at the beginning of Christ’s earthly life there were reports of angelic choirs heard in fields and a message of supposed Good News for all the people.
After all that had happened, what was the likelihood of the latest visions being any more enduring than the first ones? End of soliloquy. And Cleopas rested his case for despair.
I wonder if you and I are also disappointed in Jesus Christ’s work of redemption in ourselves and/or in the world today. If the Son of Man were to come imminently, how much faith would he find? Any at all? A small amount? In you? In me? In heroic persecuted Christians “somewhere”?
Fortunately for us, the story doesn’t end there. We come now to part 2. I call it: “Things are not as they seem.” It runs from verse 25 to verse 29.
The Stranger has been listening intently. Now he speaks with an intensity, a joy, and a certitude that must have startled the two men.
Certainly, they were not expecting him to say what he said. For he speaks of a suffering that leads to glory, of definitive victory after what looked like final defeat, of a death that ends in Resurrection. And all of this is based on the Word of God familiar to every devout Jew.
His very delivery of this message must have lifted their spirits out of the desert of despair unto the lush garden of faith, for as they testified later, their hearts were burning within them as he explained the Scriptures to them.
Time to pause again. When the Stranger explained the passages in Scripture about himself, he wasn’t giving an academic lecture about the historical-critical findings concerning the Psalms. Rather, he was describing from his unique point of view the very nature of life and death, at least of life and death united to his life and death.
In God’s unfathomable mystery, it is in the arena of suffering, of life offered in atonement for sinners, and death as a final sacrificial offering that the promised Messiah—and those united to him by baptism—would win his glorious throne and rule forever over God’s kingdom—a victory which would be brought about by that very offering.
That’s quite a mouthful to chew on! Who but the Word of God himself can bring home to us this teaching found in the Scriptures in such a way that our hearts are set afire with hope and joy even as we are being tried in another fire, that of suffering with Christ?
When the crunch comes, I find in myself so much resistance to this experience of weakness. If it’s a choice between fight or flight, I’ll pick fight almost every time!
But a third choice—surrender—well, only by the merciful grace of God! How we all need to allow Jesus to explain or interpret for us what is happening. There is no other way to comprehend in depth the nature of things in a broken world but sharing in the glory of Christ’s triumph through faith in him who was broken for us.
That brings us to part 3: “Jesus recognized.” (verses 30-35).
It is curious that up to this point, despite their growing attachment to the Stranger, the disciples still had not recognized him. This only happened when he broke the Eucharistic bread with them.
At the moment when he gives them himself it all comes together. Then they see that only the One who sacrificed himself for them can make it possible to live from the new fire burning in their souls.
My body for you…my blood for you are the living words that enable one to live from all the other words ever spoken about the great mystery of our Redeemer. In the gift of himself to us in the Eucharist is the link between prophecy and fulfillment in us, between the promise of the Old Testament and promise become reality in the New.
For how will the world of today, and the Church of today recognize Jesus but through the gift of himself living anew in his disciples, living eucharists on fire with the Lord’s own flame?
But that might look at the same time so very human—visiting the sick or the elderly, playing with one’s own children, listening to a lonely person, going the extra mile with a suffering friend, forgiving an offence.
All these gestures of simple human kindness, given person-to-person, speak powerfully today of something that transcends simple kindness.
Rather, it is Christ himself at work, living in his disciples and giving himself anew as he “breaks open” his disciples. “Breaks open” his disciples only to feed them with himself, the Eucharistic Bread that changes us, slowly but surely, into the One we have consumed.
With joy the disciples returned to Jerusalem. For they had met the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus.
