One summer, my friend walked El Camino del Santiago – the pilgrimage route through France and Spain to the shrine of St. James (Sant’Iago) at Campostella. Many pilgrims told her that the people they came with were often not the people they walked with. Walking speeds and rhythms vary; disagreements can crop up. People often fall in with strangers on that trail, and sometimes those strangers have just the gifts they need for the spiritual journey that parallels the physical one. (For a film about this, check out “The Way,” starting Martin Sheen as a reluctant pilgrim on the Camino.) That's what happened to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and the companion who joined them.
In our Sunday readings, it's still the Day of Resurrection. On Easter Sunday, we visit the events of that morning. On Easter 2, it’s that evening. On Easter 3, this year, we find ourselves with two of Jesus’ disciples in the late afternoon of that same day, on a road outside Jerusalem:
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”
I wish I knew why “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” It seems from other resurrection appearances that Jesus must not have looked like himself. It is also true that often we just don’t see what we don’t expect to see, especially if it is outside the bounds of probability. These two were already under great stress from the events of the past few days – seeing their Lord betrayed, arrested, tried, mocked, flogged, crucified… and just as they were coming to terms with that reality, Reality itself was turned upside down with the empty tomb and reports that people had seen Jesus alive, had talked with him. How could these things be? Was it a conspiracy? A hoax? Could it possibly be true?
We process things by talking about them. So these two, in the midst of great upheaval, were discussing it all, trying to make some sense of it. And along comes a stranger who doesn’t even seem to know what they’re talking about – it would be like someone who had never heard of coronavirus. Yet he knows more than anyone they've ever met. He helps them understand, and sends them running seven miles back the way they’d come, their world transformed.
Have you ever found yourself talking about traumatic events with total strangers? In our time of global trauma, in which reality has been turned upside down, such conversations may be happening more often. Are you aware of Christ with you in such encounters? Of Christ in you, or in another?
Ask God to send you alongside someone today who needs the gift you bring, the gift of the presence of Christ in you. Tonight, think back and see how that prayer was answered. Try it again tomorrow. Where will the risen Christ join us on the Way today?
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