The Emmaus Road

The Easter Season continues with this Sunday’s Gospel, The Road to Emmaus [recounted in St Luke’s Gospel alone]. It is a well-known story, the two disciples leaving the city of Jerusalem, broken in spirit, after the death of Christ.
 

The unknown stranger who accompanies them reveals himself to be the same Christ and they now recognise Him in the ‘breaking of bread’. Interestingly there is no archaeological or historical record of where Emmaus is! Not to say this is a concocted story, but maybe we can  also look at this Gospel figuratively as well. Emmaus is every place and all our journeys, called in faith to recognise the Risen Christ in our midst. Like the two on the road our faith will deepen and mature through the crises, the loss, the laying aside of our human dreams and worldly aspirations. If we stay on our own road to Emmaus, faithful, yet so often faltering on the journey, a new relationship can open up to us with Christ; richer, deeper, humbler than we can possibly imagine. As simple as a piece of broken bread—the Holy Bread of the Eucharist.
 

Last week I had an amazing few days in Lourdes with HCPT Group 24/324 from the Epsom area, along with many hundreds of pilgrims with HCPT. The parish here in Epsom was very much in the thoughts and prayers of Group 24/324 and for all us pilgrims it was, I am sure, a wonderful step on the Emmaus Road. Travelling back from the airport I saw this poem on a London Tube train. There is something impactful and challenging in its words – like Easter itself :

Many a madman has imagined himself a general

and some have even become one,

the myopic decorator of Easter eggs may one day paint a church

and it’s not impossible that a comet will later crash into its steeple

and cry out, ‘Christ is risen’

just as you

who swear you love me

may once upon a time even come to love me. (‘Myopic Painter’ – Dinescu)

With every blessing and prayers from the Grotto in Lourdes,

Fr Simon