3rd Sunday of Easter

Gospel Reflection

Luke 24:13-35

“I saw the Lord always before me; therefore, my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will dwell in hope.” These words, quoted by St. Peter in today’s first reading, come originally from Psalm 16, a psalm of David the King. They may have more than one layer of meaning, but their principle focus, Peter tells us, is Jesus, whose unique relationship with God the Father was proven by His resurrection from the dead. In these words we glimpse Our Lord’s own life of piety as a man. With this tender confidence He was able to face the terrible trials of His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the later physical sufferings of his death by scourging and crucifixion.
 
If we now turn our attention to the touching Gospel account St. Luke gives us of the two disciples returning to their home in Emmaus, we see how Jesus brings this deep trust in the Father to each one of us. The two despondent persons, one of whom is named as Cleopas, were making their way back, after the tragic event of Jesus’ death by crucifixion. Along the way they were commiserating about their failed hopes, and were clearly scandalized by the violent end to Jesus’ life. Like many Jews of their time, the prophecies of a Saviour King or Messiah were interpreted by them as leading to a new political order and a restored prominence for Israel as a nation among the nations. They had seen Jesus’ rise in popularity, his extraordinary impact on people’s minds, his miracles demonstrating God’s favour as a definite sign that this outcome was about to materialize. Instead, they now knew that Our Lord had been subjected to shameful abuse and death-dealing punishment by the authorities, while popular support appeared to collapse.
 
Now, not even early reports of an empty tomb could raise their expectations. While they continued in this depressed mood, Jesus Himself, newly risen, approached them from behind. Once at their side, He greeted them and entered into their discussion, with gentleness and concern. As God He knew perfectly well what was on their minds, yet as a man He simply entered into dialogue with them, and so gradually helped them to see things from a completely different perspective.
 
The two disciples, quite mysteriously, did not at first recognize Our Lord. St. Mark, commenting on the same incident, tells us that Jesus appeared to them “in another form.” What this means is not perfectly clear, but must be seen as relating to the resurrected body of Christ, which was not bound by the common laws of nature. For instance, Jesus may have appeared to them as he looked when He was several years younger.
 
It is later, when Jesus takes bread at supper and breaks it, perhaps in the characteristic manner He was accustomed to do, that the two disciples realized that it was He. Some writers have understood that this circumstance was willed by Christ to remind us of His extraordinary presence in the Holy Eucharist, or, as it was first called, the “breaking of the bread.” We do not see Him there in the consecrated hosts with our eyes, but we acknowledge that He is truly, really and substantially there.
 
When Jesus then vanished from their sight, Cleopas and his companion remarked: “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to us the Scriptures?” Thereafter they might often have thought of those words from the Psalm of David: “I saw the Lord always before me; therefore, my heart was glad.”
 
This sense of Christ’s presence should be ours too, and can grow as we learn to make more frequent acts of faith, and even to use our imagination somewhat to remind ourselves that Jesus always walks with us through the days of our life, and He is especially close to us with His resurrected Humanity, when we pray near a Tabernacle, and when we receive Him in Holy Communion.