There is something so essential about the gospel this weekend that two thousand years later we still contemplate it to learn both about Christ and more so to learn about ourselves as responders to the divine love which enables our salvation.
Yes, there is an easy and correct conclusion that Christ’s teaching on Moses and the prophets that were about himself constitutes the Liturgy of the Word, and the breaking of Bread constitutes the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
In one simple story is established the Mass as we know it, still celebrated all these centuries later. But we experience an inclination that we need to explore the story further to help satisfy a yearning to understand more fully what Christ wants us to learn about Him and about ourselves being made into his likeness.
The Journey of Understanding: Christ Revealed in Word and Sacrament
At the end of the journey for the day Jesus made as if to go on but at their urging he stayed, at least this time. Yes, they recognised him at the breaking of bread but, also he was gone in a flash once that recognition had been established.
The teaching and the meal were to be for all time and provided part of the mission of his followers, as Church, to perpetuate the celebration of the Eucharist at which Christ is present in sacramental form.
Christ in the future will be present, but not in the humanity to which his disciples were accustomed to experience. The Risen Christ is too large and powerful to be limited by a human form, which is where we are left in this day and age. We now meet Christ in many forms.
Burning Hearts and Opened Eyes: Encountering the Risen Lord
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
Without doubt that Emmaus Walk included the greatest scripture lecture ever delivered. Pity the two didn’t think to record it for posterity, but Christ’s Bride, the Church, has satisfactorily preserved the lecture’s essence in her teachings.
Even just contemplating this story, provided by Saint Luke, can help us identify with the two disciples and our own hearts can thrill at the mere idea of Christ teaching us about how Moses and the prophets foretold how the Messiah should suffer and so enter his glory.
The fact that Christ shows such enormous patience with the two, who apparently weren’t listening to him very well before his death, gives us plenty of hope that Christ will always give us time to catch up with all his teachings.
The two did hope that the Messiah was to free Israel, but their understanding of this freedom seems to be askew. We constantly have to be aware in our dealings about God, that God’s ways are not our ways, God’s thoughts not our thoughts.
God’s liberation for humanity is liberation from sin and death and the consequences of the Fall from Grace. This involves eternity, not the temporal world which will come to an end and definitely not liberation from the Romans which disappointed the Jerusalem crowd as to the mission of the Messiah. “Crucify him” was the judgment of their disappointment.
Was the burning in their hearts responsible for the two disciples’ recognition of Jesus at the breaking of bread? Certainly, at Mass the Liturgy of the Word comes first and the idea of our own hearts being stirred with the Spirit of Christ should be foremost in our minds.
Listening closely to the reading of the scriptures can broaden and deepen our appreciation of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus. It prepares us to receive Him in the form of consecrated bread and wine at Holy Communion, that is: communion with Christ and communion with one another.
From Encounter to Mission: Proclaiming the Risen Christ
And like the two disciples immediately returned to Jerusalem, we can burst out of church to bring this Good News out where it belongs: into the world.
Given this is what the two disciples did we can be left in little doubt that they experienced something absolutely breath-taking. They didn’t stay in the inn to sleep the night away. They were out of the door straight away, eager to make their way back to Jerusalem, in the dark!
Night-time wasn’t going to stop them reporting back to the others. Their minds must have been in a right muddle. Questions they might have asked were: did we really see the Risen Lord? Why didn’t we recognise him before the breaking of bread? Why should the breaking of bread have been the catalyst? Why were our minds so dull speaking to him along the road? When we tell the others will we look and sound ridiculous?
The sorts of questions it is human to ask when we try to make sense of an unusual event and to remain safe within the family or peer group.
They wanted to check it out with the other disciples to make sure that they weren’t losing their minds, and also to provide one of the first instances of witnessing to the resurrection of Christ.
The thrilling in their hearts at Christ’s teaching along the road must have spilled over into their return journey to Jerusalem. They must have been very confident that the sacred scriptures had been fulfilled.
Their faith was now complete, verified and expanded by welcoming Christ as Redeemer and Sanctifier. They had been drawn into a remarkable encounter with the Risen Lord from which they would never recover.
They may be two unusual disciples to imitate and seek inspiration from when our own faith is a bit unclear or without direction or purpose. When we need a spiritual lift so that our hearts can burn within us because of self-doubt, we can receive inspiration from these two journeying disciples to Emmaus and back to Jerusalem.
That journey of faith remains for all of us to follow. Cleopas and Companion, pray for us!
Fr John Hogan is the Parish Priest at St Finbar’s Glenbrook Parish.
This reflection is an example of the Diocesan Pastoral Plan priority of Formation to achieve the objective of becoming a Humble and Healing Church. Visit Synodality to learn more.
