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Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This gospel passage is the famous account of the disciples of Emmaus… . The locality of Emmaus has not been identified with certainty. There are various hypotheses, and this one is not without an evocativeness of its own, for it allows us to think that Emmaus actually represents every place: The road that leads there is the road every Christian, every person, takes. The risen Jesus makes himself our traveling companion as we go on our way, to rekindle the warmth of faith and hope in our hearts and to break the bread of eternal life.
In the disciples’ conversation with the unknown wayfarer the words the evangelist Luke puts in the mouth of one of them are striking: “We had hoped” (Luke 24:21). This verb in the past tense tells all: We believed,…
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The content of the disciples’ despair concerned their expectation that Jesus would function as a more or less traditional Messiah- king, most likely. The Emmaus passage deconstructs that view and has Jesus demonstate that not only is such a “hope” not real hope at all, but that the only genuine hope is had in the Incarnation, in Jesus Himself, whereby the entire human race now stands in a new and utterly salvific relation to God the Father. The joy and the hope of the Incarnation are what we see on the road and also on our own roads as well. Scripture when read by Jesus on the road accompanying , that is, in the setting of the Church’s liturgy wheer He also accompanies us indeed makes our hearts thrill just as the bread and body when offferd by Jesus causes us to know and recognize Him.