3rd Sunday of Easter (The Walk to Emmaus)

The account of Jesus and the two companions on the road to Emmaus is a much beloved story, occurring in the afternoon of that first Easter Sunday, just outside of Jerusalem. It’s a story of hope and certain future where there had been sadness and confusion.

But one of the subtle elements lying within this story is a blueprint for the liturgy we’re celebrating right now: the Mass. And clearly this story, in which the followers of Jesus come to have a true experience of him, reveals the pattern of how the early Christians came together to worship God: word and sacrament, just as we are right now.

In this story we see the basic framework for one of the two primary parts of the Mass. First, the Liturgy of the Word: We’re told that “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, (the mysterious companion) interpreted to them what referred to (Jesus) in all the Scriptures”. Then what followed was the second of the two primary parts: breaking bread at the table. As he comes to us in the spoken word, through our auditory capacities, through our consciousness and into our souls, he comes to us in what follows: our breaking of the bread. And just as it was those two components together—word and sacrament—that made Jesus recognizable to the Emmaus companions, we still find the essential connection.

Pope Benedict XVI said that this account “enables us to reflect further on this link between the hearing of the word and the breaking of the bread. . . .Scripture itself points us towards an appreciation of its own unbreakable bond with the Eucharist. . . . the word of God sacramentally takes flesh in the event of the Eucharist. The Eucharist opens us to an understanding of Scripture, just as Scripture for its part illumines and explains the mystery of the Eucharist” (Verbum Domini 54–55).

For all the ways that like these Emmaus companions, we too can lose hope on any given day and in any given situation, we need to remember what the Mass is intended to be for us. For all the ways we long for companionship and dialogue with Jesus, let us never lose sight of what we’re doing right now, in this Walk to Emmaus. For whatever ways we lose sight of what the Mass is intended to be, let us ask the Holy Spirit to give us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts that feel—all that Jesus would want to reveal of himself in this beautiful, ancient ritual handed on to us—a ritual now entrusted to us. Come Lord Jesus, burn within our hearts. Speak to us in the ancient yet living Scriptures. Make yourself known to us in the breaking of the bread.