THE TWO TABLES
April 30th, 2017: Third
Sunday of Easter, Year A. Luke 24:13-35.
AIM: To help the hearers
appreciate God’s presence in his word.
This best known of all the
resurrection stories, which we have just heard in the gospel, is also one of the
most loved. Three elements of the story explain its appeal. First, it has an
element of suspense: we know in advance the identity of the story’s central
figure and are eager to see when the other people in the story will discover
what we already know. Second, we can identify with the two friends of Jesus.
They are not leaders, like Peter or Paul, but ordinary disciples like
ourselves. Finally, the story appeals because it shows Jesus coming to his
friends in the two ways he has always come: through word and sacrament. This
aspect is worth pursuing further.
After Jesus’ disappearance, his two
friends recall that their hearts had been “burning within us while he spoke to
us ... and opened the Scriptures to us.” Jesus could make people feel that
God’s word was addressed personally to them. More than once the gospels record
that “he spoke with authority,” and not like other religious teachers. (Mt. 7:29 and parallels.)
When you read God’s word, or hear it
read in church, do you ever feel that the words are addressed personally to
you? To do so, you must learn to listen. You must become still, opening your
heart and mind to what the Lord wants to say to you. That takes time. How good
to see people coming early to Mass, so that they have time to become quiet, prepared
to listen to God’s word with open hearts and open minds. That is something
people with children are seldom able to do. Once we begin to appreciate that
Jesus comes to us through his word, we will be less apt simply to rattle off
prayers mechanically. We shall be more aware that the words we speak to God in prayer mean something. Then, starting with the
most familiar prayers like the Our Father and Hail Mary, we’ll pray them more
slowly, more reverently.
Though the two friends of Jesus in
today’s gospel feel their hearts burning within them as they listen to the
Lord’s words, they recognize him only “in the breaking of the bread.” That is
the earliest name for the Eucharist. But Jesus does not linger. At once he is
gone. Jesus had not been brought back to his old life. That ended on Calvary . Jesus was raised
to a new life, beyond death: a higher
mode of existence no longer limited by the physical laws which govern life
before death. In his book Jesus of
Nazareth Pope Benedict, now retired, explains this by writing: “[Jesus’]
presence is entirely physical, yet he is not bound by physical laws, the laws
of space and time. ... He is the same embodied man, and he is the new man, having entered upon a different manner of
existence” (p. 266, emphasis supplied).
Jesus’ swift disappearance shows also
that he did not come to these friends of his so that they could luxuriate in a
great spiritual experience. He came to empower them to carry the good news of
his resurrection to others. Under the influence of this unexpected and
wonderful encounter they forget their weariness and the late hour, and return
at once to Jerusalem
Is your life dark? If so, perhaps it
is because you are not journeying with Jesus Christ. One day you will come to
the evening of life’s journey. Happy then if Jesus is with you, so that you can
press him to stay: “when the shadows lengthen, and the busy world is hushed,
and the fever of life is over, and our work is done” (Newman). Then he will stay with you, to take you to the
place he has gone ahead to prepare for you (cf. John 14:2).
But that great encounter is still in
the future. Here and now, if you wish to journey with Jesus Christ (and your
presence here shows that, deep in your heart, you do), you must encounter him
in the same two ways as those friends of Jesus did at Emmaus: through his word,
and in the breaking of the bread – which is the Mass.
Let me conclude with some verses
written as a meditation on this beautiful story of the appearance of the risen
Lord to the two disciples at Emmaus. They are by Fr. Ralph Wright, a monk of
our own St. Louis Abbey on Mason
Road
Sing of one
who walks beside us / And this day is living still,
One who now is closer to us / Than the
thought our hearts distill,
One who
once upon a hilltop / Raised against the power of sin,
Died in
love as his own creatures / Crucified their God and King.
Strangers
we have walked beside him / The long journey of the day,
And have
told him of the darkness / That has swept our hope away.
He has
offered words of comfort, / Words of energy and light,
And our
hearts have blazed within us / As he saved us from the night.
Stay with
us, dear Lord, and raise us / Once again the night is near.
Dine with
us and share your wisdom. / Free our hearts from every fear.
In the calm
of each new evening, / In the freshness of each dawn,
If you hold us fast in
friendship / We will never be alone.
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