Back to Jerusalem from Emmaus: The Right Direction

It is particularly nice when I can say in these pages, "I was there!". And "there" in this instance is Emmaus, just outside of Jerusalem. Well, by car or bus, just outside, about 11 or 12 miles. But back in 33 A.D. or so, that was quite the walking haul.

Just so happens that today's Gospel is about the two travellers on their way to Emmaus after the the Crucifixion of Jesus. One is Cleopas; the other is unnamed.  They are dispirited individuals. They have left Jerusalem. One might even say they are giving up. The person in whom they had put their hopes of the salvation of Israel, of all men, is gone. A man joins them. He seems not to have heard of the cataclysmic events and they pour out their hopes and consequent disappointment.

They ask the man to join them for supper. And so he does. It is only at the moment that He breaks bread, as he had done the night before He suffered, that they realize with Whom they eat, the Resurrected Christ, The God of Israel made Man.

Picture at the outdoor Church at Emmaus 2018

They are fed, and they are renewed. Christ disappears. They now set out to go back to Jerusalem, their hopes restored.

When my bus companions and I arrived in Emmaus, it was just after dark, perhaps around the same time that 2000 plus years ago, the two travellers and Our Lord sat down to supper. Our group's priest prepared to say Mass, so that we, too, would be fed that night, and so we would have the Grace to restore our hopes.

I remember. I felt so at peace that night, in that place, in part because I was, in a small way, participating in what is one of my favorite Gospels. .

That peace has been escaping me during this last nearly eight weeks. I have had a harder time than even usual in praying. I have tried to live stream Mass every day, replicating, albeit remotely, my usual activity of the nearly last 9 years. But some days, it has seemed that I was distancing myself, kind of like leaving town in a spiritual way.

"I don't need to watch Mass today," I have quietly thought. Faith is, for me at least, though I think I have read this somewhere, is a matter of habit. One must make the effort, regularly. My practice has been disrupted.  No doubt some will relate to this.

People who eschew religion, either out of contempt or out of indifference, or some philosophy that makes it unnecessary to their lives tend to think being religious is some kind of palliative. It is hard to maintain one's practice of faith on a good day. On days like the ones we have been having, it is like climbing a mountain.

But today, aside from the blessed reminder of Cleopas and his companion, I got the chance to be close to our Lord, in a sense to have Him travel with me, by sitting with Him in His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament--all while adhering to the social distance mandate.

At least, for the moment, I am going back toward Jerusalem, in the right direction.