Along the Way

The gospel story about the disciples on the road to Emmaus provides a convenient metaphor for Christian life. The well known story of the discouraged and disappointed two men who had hoped invites us to probe deeper into God’s Word and, consequently, into our lives as Christian believers.

During this Year of the Eucharist, the Lucan account opens up prayerful consideration of how the Eucharist from the earliest days of the Church until our present brings together the Christ mystery, which we celebrate during these Great Forty Days of Easter. In the recounting of the story of the two men’s encounter with the Lord, we are invited to appreciate how the Lord’s death and rising are intimately joined to the Eucharist as food for our life as disciples of the Risen Lord.

The setting is obviously resurrectional, for we read that it was on the first day of the week, which is to say Easter Sunday. Of note for us who have Sunday as the conclusion of our weekend, Sunday for the Christian Assembly was the first day, the beginning of the new age of the Kingdom. Sunday, with the reality of the Lord’s Resurrection and its celebration of the Lord’s presence, offers new life and new hope. We come together to enter the new creation of life in Jesus Christ.

A Hint of Eucharist

Luke, in the telling of the story, does so in a eucharistic format. There is more than a gentle hint that the story is told as the early Church gathered on the Lord’s Day to remember the death-rising of the Lord. They gathered in celebration of God’s Word. They heard and responded to the basic shape of preaching the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. They were invited to baptism and to conversion.

The meal shared by Jesus with the disciples is in the traditional shape of the breaking of the bread. Jesus completes the Word and reveals himself in taking, blessing, breaking, and giving of the bread of blessing. The disciples came to know Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Prior to this recognition, their “hearts burned within in them” as they heard his stories.

Having come to know the Lord in the scriptural Word and in the eucharistic action of bread breaking, they went off to share their Good News with the Eleven. They had become Church in their encounter with the Lord. As they were reunited with the Eleven, they were embraced with an early Easter hymn of the Church: “The Lord has been raised it is true. He has appeared to Simon.” The revelatory experience of God’s Word and of the food of the Lord’s Table gives birth to a new people of faith, risen in the Lord. The eucharistic experience enables new hope.

Story Telling and Remembering

Going a bit further than the Emmaus story, the Christian community can reflect and pray. They can develop a liturgical spirituality of remembering and story-telling. At the Last Supper, Jesus had asked them to continue the meal actions in his memory.

This was to speak words of blessing and do grace-filled gestures of God’s actions among us. To remember is to publically proclaim or bless the Father’s action in Christ. Particularly, the Church gathered on Sundays to bless God for his action in the person of Jesus Christ. The Church remembered the death and rising of the Lord. In this remembering process, the Lord continues to reveal his presence among his faithful disciples.

From these liturgical and scriptural resources a believer can pursue a spirituality of story-telling. Like the disciples on the road, we begin with the telling of our own stories. We share our hopes and disappointments. We witness our limited understanding of the Christ mystery in our lives. Into this human story-telling, initiated in God’s grace, the Lord enters our journey. He probes our needs and doubts. Then in a moment of grace, the Lord speaks his story beginning with the fidelity of the Father in the Jewish scriptures and continuing to his revelation in Jesus himself.

The culmination of the story is the death and rising of the Lord. He who was dead is now alive! In that passing over from death to life, the life of the community is transformed. Believers come to understand, to recognize, and, ultimately, they come to faith. Hearts burn within the community of faith. They eat and drink with the Lord. They hear once again, with the community and in their own lives, the post-resurrectional greeting: “Don’t be afraid” and the Word of confidence: “Peace be with you.”

The Liturgical Assembly

The centrality of the liturgical Assembly comes into focus in our spiritual life and in the worship of the Church. The Church, in the words of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, “expresses and becomes” what the community is. The scriptural word becomes revelatory of God with us in the Assembly which proclaims and responds to the Word. First spoken in the liturgy, the Word is later written for the upbuilding of the Church. The hymns and songs of the Christian scriptures celebrate and dance the mystery of God in the midst of his People. As the psalmist writes, and we come to understand, “God dwells on the praises of his People.”

This presence is further enacted in the liturgical gesture: “taking, blessing, breaking (pouring), and giving.” As in numerous encounters after the Resurrection, the Church continues to eat and drink with the Lord, now risen from the dead. His story of victory over death and of hope become the story of all believers.

Sunday Eucharist

These Great Forty Days of Easter offers us the blessing and invitation to grow in our resurrection journey. This journey is marked Sunday after Sunday as we continue to live in the new age of the Kingdom. We are and become a living word of hope in Christ Jesus. We become the mystery of Christ which we share. There’s more to Sunday Mass than “going to Church”. Each Sunday, as disciples, we encounter and are encouraged by the Lord, once dead, but now risen forever.

CDH