Sunday Homily: The Twofold Movement

"Were our hearts not burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scripture to us?"

Today we're presented with a wonderful Easter season opportunity to reflect on the power of scripture to reveal Christ to us, and on our opportunity to know him as the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread.

The story of the two disciples meeting Jesus on their way to Emmaus is one that we're all likely to know well. It's one with which we have likely grown to be familiar over the years. However, as well as we may know it, we might view it quite differently if we put ourselves in the story, if we view it from the inside and let it tell us something about our daily walk with Jesus.

I haven't asked all of you, but it's probably a common experience among Christian believers everywhere that we frequently find ourselves feeling somewhat like the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. We have heard, at least from others, that Jesus has been raised from the dead—and we take it, at first, as a matter of testimony on the word of others, not having seen the risen Lord for ourselves, but we desire more. It is not enough for us simply to have testimony of the Resurrection. Our faith itself creates in us a sense of longing and an anticipation of something more.

Because we have faith, that is because we value and cherish our belief in Jesus, we also desire the experience of his presence as a tangible reality, though at first his resurrected presence is something we believe only by listening to stories from a great distance in time. Those behind us on the road, back in Jerusalem, saw the empty tomb, and we take it on their word for now. Nevertheless, deep within we have the expectation of coming to know him all the more and as all the more real.

Although the moment of the Resurrection is separated from us by the millennia, the Resurrection event also has the power to transcend time. Jesus has the power to enter our lives now even at this moment as we listen to the word being opened—the power at work is his in-breaking presence seen throughout salvation history; it is what makes the ancient scripture speak of him.

If we treat the message today as though it were a spiritual roadmap, it contains the necessary ingredients to point out the path of coming to experience, to recognize, the resurrected Lord in our lives. It presents us with a simple message of faith that we should attempt to keep clear and to cherish always as the "how to" of knowing Jesus. The message today is one that should also inspire us to search the scriptures for they reveal his presence to us.

Through scripture we come to assimilate the Lord's presence in our hearts—in the word he is every bit as real as if he were walking along the road beside us. To know him we first listen and allow him to open the scripture for us. It is only when we have walked along the way with him—listening and receiving him in the word as he opens it to us—that we come to know him in the breaking of the bread.

The reality of the risen Christ comes to us in a twofold movement, that of word and table; it is also the twofold movement of the Liturgy of Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist that we as Catholics have come to know in the Mass. Word and sacrament is the way given to us that we might come to know Jesus better, indeed that we might come to know him truly as the resurrected Lord.

It is also in the world of our hearts—in our everyday lives—that we come to assimilate the twofold movement of word and table, of receiving Jesus daily in scripture and in living out a Eucharistic reality of allowing the real presence to shine forth in the world of our relationships with others.

Years ago as a young Christian, before my conversion to Catholicism, I recall first discovering the New Testament proclamation that the Old Testament scripture reveals the person and work of Jesus Christ. For me at that time, not yet being a Catholic, scripture and the proclamation of Jesus revealed in it was the best I could find in my search for his presence. Although it gave me much, at the same time I found myself longing for something more, and intuitively it seems I began to look in the direction of breaking bread with the Lord.

It wasn't that having the bible and understanding it as the word of God was somehow lacking, but it was partial in the sense of the whole truth available. There was still something else to be seen and experienced. The second part of the twofold movement of word and table was missing. The Emmaus experience was not yet complete.

The story of the walk to Emmaus is an invitation for us: we're invited to walk with Jesus, to open scripture with him, and finally to dine with him. In many ways it's what waits at the end of the journey that's most intriguing. We're looking for the Lord being made known in the breaking of the bread—to seeing him in his resurrected glory.

Although we can interpret the story as an allegory referring to our whole life in Christ from birth to death, it doesn't hold that we have to wait until the very end of life to dine with the Lord—to be in his presence and see him face to face. Quite the contrary, the true importance of the Emmaus journey is about learning how to see Jesus in the word we have been given and in our daily bread. The importance of the message is ultimate for hearts that long to see Jesus on the journey and come to dine with him as a friend.

Comments

[Ann]

Good post. The fact that these two extended their hospitality to the engaging stranger is an act we too like to think ourselves capable of had we been there. In the present time none of us has to look too far to be hospitable nor indeed do we have to travel far to dine with the Lord. And for those housebound and in hospital the good Lord comes to them thanks to our priests, deacons and Eucharistic ministers.

[Carol]

Indeed, Ann, not too far to be hospitable.. I wonder what hospitality those 400+ kids taken from a Texas polygamy ranch, poor tykes - and pity their moms, yes, most of whom were Mom-ized by the age of 16, will find among us, if they cannot be returned to their moms. I hope and pray it'll work out with the least possible trauma. Why do folks still DO these stupid things -- things like the Mormon power trip?

I'm also wondering what sort of hospitality will come to the thousands of possibly illegal workers rounded up from Pilgrim's Pride chicken farms here in the States. What terror must be in their hearts today, and in the hearts of those who are wondering why they didn't come home. I wonder if there is a land where it's not illegal to live a decent life?