An event happens late in the afternoon on the day of Jesus’ Resurrection, charged with the power of surprise and profound revelation. It seems a simple, even a mundane event in the beginning, and yet, as it unfolds, we are astonished by joy and filled with wonder. Like a poem, this little story is packed with a depth and a truth that is far beyond its small number of words. In its tightly packed details, we see how the whole of scripture is a road map pointing us to Jerusalem and the meaning and purpose of the passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it reveals how Christ’s real presence was made known to the two disciples in this story, and how he remains present to us even now.
We encounter two disciples on the road to the village of Emmaus, some seven miles away from Jerusalem. It is late in the afternoon of the third day after Jesus’ crucifixion. They are downcast, and they were heading away, maybe even running away from Jerusalem, fearing for their own lives because of what had happened there over the last three days. All of the hopes that they had placed in Jesus as their Messiah seemed to have been destroyed, crushed in the ignominy of the cross. Nothing had come about in the way that they had imagined and hoped for in their dreams about the Messiah. They were now burdened with a complex set of emotions: sorrow, confusion, even the hopelessness of doubt.
Experience the story as these two dejected disciples experienced it. A stranger suddenly joins them on their walk and asks them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk” (v. 17)? We are given the name of only one of the disciples, Cleopas, who expresses surprise that this stranger had not heard of the things that had happened to Jesus of Nazareth, “who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people” (v. 19), about how he had been crucified. He tells the stranger about the women who had gone to the grave and had a vision of angels and how they had come back breathless and filled with excitement, saying that he was alive. Then the stranger says to them (and to us): “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory” (v. 25)? Then he “interprets” the whole of the scriptures to them, beginning with Moses and through all of the prophets. We can imagine, can’t we, how “their hearts were burning within them as he talked with them on the road” (v. 32). Yet, they still did not recognize him. They still did not see the big picture before them.
Could this be true for us at times too? Are we not surprised by wonder sometimes, like when we are struck with an insight, with such clarity and truth that it turns our former certainties upside down, that opens our minds to a reality that is far deeper and more clear than our presumed former ‘wisdom’? Might it be possible that our certainties about God, about who Jesus is, and about the meaning of his life for us in the here and now, are shaped, or even misshapen by our own innocent, as yet unrecognized ignorance, or by our earthly desires, or by our own temporal hopes and dreams, rather than by the fullness of truth? This is what happens when Jesus, the stranger still in this story, opens up the scriptures to the two disciples. It becomes clear that the key to understanding the whole of the scriptures is his suffering and death, his willingness to go into the very depths of godforsakenness to save those who had wandered away from divine love since the time of Adam. Until we “get” this insight, the whole of life can tend to be little more than a blur of events, a string of meaningless happenings. And that is the environment that gives rise to doubt and despair.
But the story does not end there. The two disciples, still ignorant of who it is that has been walking with them and opening up the scriptures to them in ways that they had never experienced before, invite the stranger into their house to share a meal. “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is nearly over” (v. 29). At the table, this stranger takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. In this action, our minds go directly back to the Last Supper and what Jesus did there. It is at this moment that the two disciples “get it”! Their eyes, their minds, their hearts, are opened! They suddenly recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Then, with their hearts bursting with joy, they rush back to Jerusalem to tell the others.
Cleopas and his fellow disciple came to understood that the scriptures tell us who Jesus is and what he does, and what his purpose is, but it is in the Eucharist, the breaking of the Bread, that Jesus Christ makes himself present to us even now, in this day, just as he made himself present in the fullness of his resurrected body, blood, soul, and divinity to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. As Jesus disappears into the mission of the Church immediately after he is recognized, it is now our mission to bring the Good News of Jesus’ real presence to others here and now by the way that we conduct our own daily lives. Help us, Jesus, to recognize you just as the Emmaus disciples did in the breaking of the bread. Stay with us, Jesus!
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