The two disciples whom Jesus had overtaken walking towards
Emmaus, although their hearts had been burning within them as He opened the Scriptures
to them, only finally recognized Him at the breaking of bread during a meal
which they had invited Him to share with them.
On their receiving the bread He had blessed, He suddenly disappeared, whereupon
they set off back to Jerusalem at once to inform the apostles that very hour.
Those same disciples, having reported their experience to
the eleven apostles, and now joined by some others, were all gathered together secretly
in that upper room for fear of the Jews, when Jesus appeared again and His
first words (2 in Greek, 2 in Mother Church’s Latin version, 3 in our English
version) were:
Peace to you
!
Those few words express the whole purpose of the Son of God
becoming man for us!
However, they
still disbelieved for joy and were marvelling,
Jesus therefore set about proving to them the reality of His presence:
See My hands and My feet, that it
is I Myself. Touch Me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as
you see that I have."
And then He topped that by asking for a snack!!
"Have you anything here to
eat?" They gave Him a piece of a broiled
fish, and He took it and ate before them.
The reality of His presence being thus settled, Jesus then got
down to the main purpose of His presence with them. First of all, He was not with them as He had
been previously:
These are my words that I spoke
to you while I was still with you.
In other words He was saying, “It is indeed I who am here
with you now, but things are not exactly as they were when I spoke those words to you a few
days ago.” Jesus had then been with them
as any man is with his fellows; however, things had now changed – as the
disciples well knew -- and Jesus was no longer present to them in that worldly way.
Let us now listen carefully to Him telling them just how
different His new presence with them was, and learn just how He would
make Himself present to all His future disciples.
First, He took great care to explain His presence in the O.T.
Scriptures:
“Everything written about Me in
the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then He opened their minds to understand the
Scriptures.
That was the first part of
Jesus’ purpose for coming: to open His disciples’ minds to understand the
Scriptures!!
That presence of Jesus in the Scriptures might be
called His first mode of presence to His Church after His Resurrection, because
it begins with the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms, as Jesus Himself
said, ‘Moses wrote about Me’, and that presence will culminate in the
soon-to-appear New Testament Scriptures about the historic Life, Death, and
Resurrection of Jesus, and the perennial Good News He proclaimed for our
salvation.
Nevertheless, the supreme mode of Jesus’ real, Personal, presence
for His future Church was made absolutely clear by the report brought by those
two disciples who had been talking with the Risen Jesus on their way to Emmaus. Their hearts and minds had been burning with joy
and wonder as He explained the Scriptures, but it was not until the celebration
of the Eucharist that they recognized Him:
They told the Apostles
how Jesus was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
That Eucharistic manner of Jesus’ risen-presence -- formally,
and most solemnly, instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper with His Apostles --
now confirmed the veracity of the two Emmaus disciples’ report to the fearful Church
in Jerusalem.
However, our Gospel reading today confirms the reality of yet
another, a third, mode of His presence with-and-for His future Church: the presence He had foretold with the following
words recorded for us by St. Matthew (18:20):
Where two or three are gathered
in My name, there am I among them.
Dear People of God, we can find Jesus, experience His
presence, in varying ways: He is
always present for us, for our understanding, in the Old and New Testament Scriptures;
He is also spiritually present for those assembled together to hear, learn from, and promote His Gospel; and
supremely, He is sacramentally present in His Eucharistic- sacrifice-and-feast for those of faith, and Personally
present for those who sacrifice themselves with Him at the Eucharist by
their lives of devotion and commitment.
As Peter explained to those who had witnessed his cure of
the lame man:
And His (Jesu’s) Name -- by faith in His name -- has made this
man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has
given this man perfect health, in the presence of you all. (Acts 3:16)
Living by ‘faith in His name’ is the supremely
authentic way of responding with personal love to Jesus’ gracious presence in our individual
lives, showing itself with a commitment of obedient and public witness to His word,
as St. John told us in our second reading:
We know that we have come to know
Him, if we keep His commandments.
Dear Friends in Christ, by signalling the various modes of
His presence to-and-for His believers Jesus was preparing His Church for her
great world-wide mission to proclaim:
Repentance and forgiveness
of sins in His name to all the nations.
The early Christians were still very closely bound up with
their Jewish brethren in the synagogue; indeed, many still worshipped with them
in the Temple and in the synagogue.
However, in our Gospel reading Jesus is preparing His
Church for the future and it is essential that her proclamation be recognized
as independent of her Jewish origins: those origins are never to be denied but
they are not, henceforth, to be racially restrictive or spiritually definitive
(Luke 24:47):
Repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
