Christ With Us on the Way of Life

Christ has made known to us the true way of life and ransomed us from the useless way of life handed down to us. He is with us today in the breaking of bread.

Readings:

Acts of the Apostles  2: 14, 22-33

Psalm 15: 1-2, 5. 7-11

I St Peter 1: 17-21

Luke 24: 13-35

Scripture Reflection

The Gospel story of the Journey to Emmaus would have been a suitable text for yesterday's First Holy Communion Mass. Luke the Evangelist's story of this meeting on the first Easter Day between Jesus and two of his downcast disciples contain as many golden threads in the form of sentences, phrases and even single words which merit untangling and exploring and absorbing into our lives. The key is to understand that there is and never has been a place called Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. Archaeologists have long searched for even a sign of this place having once existed and have found nothing. Luke, we believe, uses the name place to open up for us the understanding that we are on a journey through our lives to Emmaus and that this is the actual place in which we find ourselves. On that journey we meet situations which combine to determine how we respond - like the two disciples - when Jesus presents himself at our side and invites us to tell him in our words what is going on.

 

There is insufficient time here to consider all of the threads in detail and so we take one phrase only from the Emmaus story and consider this side by side with the selected reading from Psalm 15 which is presented today, as always, between the first and second readings.

 

“Did not our hearts burn within us as he spoke to us on the journey?” The disciples come to recognise Jesus when he sits with them at table and takes the bread, blesses it and then gives it to them to eat. We pray that the hearts of the children yesterday also burned within them when they shared the Eucharist together and that they recognised Jesus in a special way at that moment - a way which will remain with them for ever. This is connected with and touches the meaning of Psalm 15. After the first two lines which contain verses one and two:

 

1. Preserve me Lord, I take refuge in you
   

2. I say to the Lord you are my rock, my stronghold:
   

 

The next line or verse reads, “My happiness lies in you alone.”

 

How many people can speak that line or verse with conviction and honesty? My happiness lies in you alone, Lord   -   not in my wife or my children, or my parents or my bank account with RBS East Kilbride, not partly, but fully - my happiness lies in you alone.  When we can make that statement with truth and sincerity, then we know that we have reached Emmaus because we have encountered Jesus, who has been walking with us on our journey through life, and in so doing we have learned God's Will for us and accepted it through hope. The disciples declare to Jesus what their hope for him had been - that he would be the one to set Israel free   -  and he replies to them, “You foolish men.”  Do/can we see ourselves in the story of Cleopas and the other disciple?

 

We know then that in our journey to our Emmaus, through the complete reality and not false image of our lives, we have been open to the deepest relationship with Jesus  - a relationship of love - and we now we give and receive that love to and from the people whom God's Providence has brought into our lives at the deepest human level of intimacy.