The road to Emmaus

 Today' gospel (Luke 24:13-35) continues the dilemma we saw on Monday. Then, the choice was between following the path of the awestruck disciples, rapt in wonder before the Risen Lord, and that of the desperate guards who swapped the truth they knew for a convenient, advantageous lie. In today's gospel, the choice is no longer about whether we want to be a disciple; rather, it is about what kind of disciple we are willing to be.

The point is that these disciples are going away from Jerusalem, the city of the Most High. Maybe they had business to attend to ("I have married a wife and cannot come"?) Or maybe they were simply escaping the still charged atmosphere of a city where Jesus had just been put to death. The reality is they were deliberately driving themselves away from the conflict. They were agitated.  And because they were agitated, they could not understand what had just happened in Jerusalem. It is not just that we need to be patient with events. We need to be patient with ourselves. We need to have enough humility to recognise when we have kicked up the silt at the bottom of our hearts. And then, we need to be still and wait for the waters to clear.

But sometimes, just sometimes, we might have the extraordinary grace granted to these disciples of having the Lord enlighten us. Why did they not recognise Him? Some say the Risen Lord looked different, and so even His friends did not know Him. St Mark says He appeared "under another form" to two disciples, but the meaning of this is not entirely clear. I think we can be allowed to believe that the barrier to recognition lay not entirely on His side but on theirs. It was not that He looked different; it was that they did not recognise the Lord as He was. It was necessary for them to lose their notions of what the Lord was like, in order to learn to know the Lord who really is. 

Because for all their knowledge, they had no understanding. They knew the faith, but their minds were full of self justifying rationalisations. For all that they were disciples, they were on their way out of Jerusalem, like the first Bishop of Rome, who years later, as he fled the city of Rome, would see a vision of Christ going towards the imperial capital: "Quo vadis?" Peter asks Him (where are you going?). "I am going to Rome to be crucified," replies the Lord. Like the disciples in Emmaus,  Peter turned around and went back to resume his calling.

Why do we leave Jerusalem for Emmaus? What possible reason do we brandish to justify leaving the storm of the present moment for our oh so necessary occupations elsewhere? It is not that in our lives we must only attend to the Lord; we all have other duties. But unless we fill those duties with the Lord, we will inevitably flee from the one thing necessary.

Let us always carry Jerusalem with us in our hearts where the Risen One dwells. Otherwise, the road to Emmaus will not stop there.