Maude and Michael have been happily married for six years. It hasn’t been bliss all the way, but they’ve become the best of friends in their struggle to live a genuine life, sharing their love with each other and their two children. One evening Michael has a meal out with an old friend, John, who was best man at his wedding, Michael is a defence lawyer, good enough at his job, whose passion is for his family; John is a brilliant prosecutor, whose energy is for his work. They reminisce about shared days at university and court, and Michael begins to talk about his family life he tells John, with delight, how he has laved Maude from the first moment he set eyes on her.

John is genuinely puzzled by Michael’s assertion. John has an excellent memory for detail, but he see everything in terms of black and white, right or wrong, and is anxious to get details right. He believes that the way he sees the world equals objective truth, and he is rarely open to correction; he prides himself on his objectivity, having spent his life ridding himself of anything that might look like passion.

When John checks his formidable memory, he feels compelled to correct his friend and play prosecutor. He says, “Michel, old son, you’ve got it wrong - you’ve forgotten that introduced you to Maude. Remember? I was there when you first met her. You heard her talking at a party in my house - I remember it clearly - and she was talking loudly and for long, and you made the passing remark to me that whoever married her would be bonded unto death to a loudspeaker with no off switch! That’s how I remember it, Michael, and believe me, that’s how it was.”

Two memories of the same event collide: which of them is right?

John remembers the event in its clinical exactness, and reports faithfully what he heard and what he saw happen. For John, there is no other way to look at it than his way. But Michael sees things differently, in a more nuanced way, refusing to limit the significance of his first meeting with Maude to the time of its happening. Michael recollects the event, now interpreting it as something more - a meeting that led to where he is now. Because Michael is in love with Maude now and they share a life together, he takes that love back in time and invests the past with a new significance. His relationship with Maude affects the way he remembers their beginnings: he gives their lirst meeting a significance it never had at the time because he now reads it in the light of his present love. The power of his passionate love actually changes the way he reads the past. On the other hand, John’s focus on exact detail means he’s missed the bigger picture.

All of us bring time to mind through our awareness of the present, our memory of the past and our hope in the future. We can also choose to ignore the present, forget the past and despair about the future. Although memory refers to the past and hope to the future, we – like Michael - remember and hope from where we are now. Depending on our present condition and mood, so we remember and so we hope. How we remember and how we hope reflect what condition we’re in now.

Because of new insight and new experiences, the past can be reinterpreted and understood anew. So, too, can the way we look at the future.

The past is not dead; it waits patiently to be recollected and reinterpreted.

Because we change, we review our past differently. We keep reinterpreting the past in the light of what is going on now in our lives. What appeared to be a mountain at the time turns out, later, to be a molehill; what appeared to be a chance encounter, way back then, becomes the most important meeting of our lives. When the meaning of an experience is unclear at the time of the experience. We have to wait for meaning. Only then can we understand.

The difference is noted in everyday language: instinctively we know there is a difference between what actually happens (the event) and what is going on (the meaning). If a teacher sees two boys fighting outside her window, she might go outside and demand to know; “What is going on here?” She knows what is happening - they’re fighting - but the question is why.

Jesus made the distinction between seeing and hearing on one hand, and perceiving and understanding on the other. You can see that difference outlined in the following table:

By Father Denis McBride

It does not follow that because we see and hear, we thereby get the message. Maybe, as T.S. Eliot noted, “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” More often than not, the meaning of an experience is not given at the time of the experience; the significance of an event is not available at the time of its happening. Some experiences have to wait; the “whole story” can never be told until the experience and the meaning are put together.

Making sense of Jesus’ death

In Luke’s beautiful story of the road to Emmaus, you see how the two disciples are struggling to make sense of a recent event: the death of Jesus. They leave Jerusalem over their shoulder as the place where their hopes met with final defeat. When a stranger joins them on the road, they tell the story of their disappointment. Jesus, the one they had hoped would set Israel free, is now dead. In their story it becomes clear that they cannot hold the two things together: their hope in Jesus and his death. The death of Jesus cancels out their hope. thus they feel hopeless and helpless.

The two disciples cannot understand how the death of Jesus can be understood as anything more than a tragic end to a life of promise. Like most people they believe that if you haven’t achieved what you set out to do before your death, you will never achieve it in death itself. When you are dead, it’s too late for everything. Death is the end of the road of promise. So the disciples mourn not only the death of Jesus but the death of their relationship with him.

Now they are ex-disciples of a dead prophet: with faces to match their story.

Only when they have finished their own story does the stranger begin his own. He invites them to look at the past again, this time in a larger context, in the light of scripture. He gives a wholly different interpretation of the same event: the death of Christ was essential for his glory. The death of Jesus was the achievement of his mission - not the collapse of it.

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. When they go in to table they break bread together. The stranger gives himself away to them. He is the risen Jesus, and he leaves them with hearts that burn and with eyes that see. Not only does he help them to interpret the past in their new experience of him as Lord, he gives them a new future. They can now face Jerusalem even in the dark, and they return there to share their story with the others.

Bringing the past up to date

In their new experience of Jesus as Lord, the disciples’ past is changed. They can now revisit the past with the new light and the new love that they have experienced. They take the light of Easter Sunday back into the darkness of Good Friday, and everything looks different now.