Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Glory to you, O Lord. That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus.
And they were conversing about all the things that had occurred.
And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
He asked them, what are you discussing as you walk along?
They stopped looking downcast, and one of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?
And he replied to them, what sort of things?
They said to him, the things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.
How our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him.
But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.
Besides all this.
It is now the third day since this took place.
Some women from our group, however, have astounded us.
They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body.
They came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive.
Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described.
But him they did not see.
And he said to them, o, how foolish you are.
How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke.
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?
Then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures.
As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave them the impression that he was going on farther.
But they urged him, stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.
So he went and stayed with them.
And it happened that while he was at table with them, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.
Then they said to each other, were not our hearts burning within us, while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures for us?
So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem, where they found, gathered together, the 11 and those who were with them, who were saying, the Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon.
Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Oftentimes, if we allow the Scriptures to slowly open up before us, we can see little hints and little ways of living that can lead us to places we want to go.
But we have to digest them slowly to allow that to germinate a bit.
And this particular story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus has the potential to do that for us.
Now, the obvious thing that jumps out every time people see or hear this is that he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. We all know that. We recognize that he's made known to us in the breaking of the bread.
But I've always found it curious, and at least at first, I was probably a little judgmental toward these disciples, that here he is post resurrection, walking along with him on a dusty road outside of Jerusalem, and they don't even know it's him.
And the Scriptures tell us their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him. That doesn't mean that God prevented them from recognizing him, but it does mean that they were not open to seeing Him.
They were probably too downcast from those events that happened.
Their faith was probably a little bit shaky and they were having a hard time believing what they heard had happened at the tomb.
So they were processing all of this and focused on their own hearts and looking in their own lives.
And they didn't see Him.
They didn't recognize.
Well, all of us, or at least me, have times in life where Jesus is walking along besides me, and I don't recognize him. I don't recognize him because I'm too focused on what I have to do later that day or thinking about something that's coming up a few days from now, or worried about what somebody thinks about me or. Or worried about all kinds of things.
Sometimes it's just.
It's been one of those weeks. I like to say I've peopled enough already, I need to be by myself.
But all of those things put up the blinders to prevent me from seeing and recognizing it.
So how do I get past that? Because those kind of emotional things, just like the two on the road to Emmaus, they continue to happen. And they're probably going to continue to happen until about five hours after I die.
How am I going to get rid of that.
Well, here's where that hint, that subtlety in the gospel gives us the way.
Even though they didn't recognize him, even though they even kind of argued with him a little bit. Are you the only one that didn't know this?
What did they do?
They said, no, it's too late now. Don't go off. Stay with us. We brought food with us. You can be with us. It's okay.
They offered him friendship and hospitality.
And because they did that, they had the opportunity to recognize him. In the breaking of the bread, they could have let him go farther. Well, nice talking to you.
Try to get better informed. We're going to go take care of ourselves. They didn't do that.
Their hearts were good enough to say, please stay with us.
And it changed our lives forever.
So the way that we can get past those things that keep us from seeing him is the same.
To be hospitable, to be welcoming, to be the friend to the stranger, and in that he has the opportunity to reveal himself.
