Alleluia! “And behold, two of them went, the same day, to a town which was sixty furlongs from Jerusalem, named Emmaus...”
- Luke 24:13-35
“Dearly beloved brethren, ye hear, how that while two of His disciples walked together in the way, not believing in His Resurrection, but talking, together concerning Him, the Lord manifested Himself unto them, but yet held their eyes that they should not know Him. This holding of the eyes of their body, wrought by the Lord, was a figure of the spiritual veil which was yet upon the eyes of their heart. For in their heart they loved and yet doubted: even as the Lord drew near to them outwardly, but showed not Who He was. To them that talked together of Him, He revealed His immediate presence; but hid, from them that doubted, the knowledge of His Person.
“Is He spoke to them; He rebuked the hardness of their heart; He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself: and, nevertheless, seeing that He was yet a stranger to faith in their hearts, He made as though He would have gone further. These words He made as though would here seem to mean He feigned, but He Who is simple Truth doth nothing with feigning: He only showed Himself to them in bodily manners, as He was towards them spiritually; but they were put to the proof whether, though they loved Him not yet as their God, they could love Him at least as a wayfarer.
“But since it was impossible, that they with whom Truth walked, should be loveless, they asked Him as a wayfarer to take of their hospitality. But why say we that they asked Him, when it is written: And they constrained Him? From their example we learn that we ought not only to bid, but also to urge, wayfarers to our hospitable entertainment. They laid a table therefore, and set before Him bread and meat; and that God Whom they had not known in the expounding of the Holy Scripture, they knew in the breaking of bread. In hearing the commandments of God they were not enlightened, but they were enlightened in the doing of them: as it is written: Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. Rom. ii. 13. Whosoever therefore will understand that which he heareth, let him make haste to practice in his works that which he hath already been able to hear. Behold, the Lord was not known while He spake, but He was contented to be known when He broke bread.”
- Pope St. Gregory the Great
Our risen Lord, high Priest of the new and perfect covenant in His Blood, celebrated the holy Mass with the disciples from Emmaus and, because of their encountering with faith His true and real Presence in the Blessed Eucharist, they recognized Him in the breaking of the Bread.
This ancient epithet for the holy Mass indicates that those who today still faithfully offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass, instituted by the Lord on the first Holy Thursday, encounter Christ today in the breaking of the bread and thus remain faithful to Him in action as well as in word.
Those who, today, act with the utmost reverence for Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist as taught by our holy tradition share in the same true Faith of those first disciples at Emmaus.
Happy Easter.
- FrC
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