FROM PROFOUND GRIEF TO PROFESSED FAITH
The Emmaus story that we reflect on this Sunday focuses our attention on the importance of recognizing the Risen Jesus in the Scriptures and in the Breaking of the Bread. The two disciples walked away from Jerusalem a place they considered a failure, with grief-filled hearts. A stranger joined them on the road. They tell their story of sadness and disappointment. “Our own hope had been that he would be the one to set Israel free.” When they finished their story, Jesus began His, interpreting for them what referred to Him in all the Scriptures, beginning with Moses and the prophets. Jesus’ story was so appealing that they felt that their hearts burned within them. Now he invited them to look at the past in the light of the Scriptures. According to the stranger, the death of Jesus was the perfect achievement of His mission, not the failure they thought it was. As the stranger helps the two disciples to make sense of the past in a new light, they respond by inviting Him to stay with them. The stranger broke bread and gave it to them and their eyes were opened! Jesus helped them interpret the past through their new experience of Him as Lord and gave them a new future. They went back to Jerusalem and shared their story and their strong belief that Jesus Christ is truly risen with the eleven. In their experience of the risen Lord, they were able to revisit the past with new light and hope, transforming the darkness of Good Friday into the light of Easter Sunday.
When rejection, failure, loss and suffering inevitably enter our lives, how strong is our faith that the Risen Lord is walking with us and that His love never abandons us? What can we do to strengthen our faith and hope when trials come? The most efficacious means is frequent celebration of the Eucharist which brings Jesus to us in both His Word and His Body and Blood. Daily meditation on Sacred Scripture, especially through the practice of ‘Lectio Divina’ can increase our faith and illumine our hope. Like the disciples, we are invited to tell the Lord our own story – to express our disappointment, distress, displeasure and even our anger over the happenings in our lives. Our trials may not make sense to us but Jesus’ promise is clear – that He does love us and cares about what we are going through and that He is walking with us. Bishop Robert Barron advises us to sit in silence before the Lord “wasting time” in His presence, listening and surrendering to His voice in our hearts. Only then can King David’s words become ours: “Lord, you have made known to us the path of life; you fill us with joy in your presence.”
