And it happened that while they were conversing and debating,
Jesus himself drew near and walked with them,
but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
They were prevented by God from recognizing the risen Lord in order that he himself might choose how he was made known to them. Their old way of thinking was cluttered with misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the meaning of the events of the Passion. Because of that it would turn out that the Jesus they thought they knew wasn't precisely who he really was. Their memories would therefore miss in an attempt to identify him now. Jesus first led them to set their own cards on the table.
“What are you discussing as you walk along?”
It seemed like Jesus had them reveal the old sorrowful story to which they clung in order to be emptied of it and to receive something new in its place. It was as though they said 'This is what we thought, but it was not so'. Once this confession had taken place Jesus told them that they had been too quick to embrace sorrow, too slow to embrace the hope embodied in the message of the prophets. They chose a foolish and worldly paradigm instead of a divine one. The divine one, no doubt, was full of obscurity before the resurrection. But there were never truly grounds for despair for one who believed.
And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are!
How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!
Had they let their hearts been formed by the hope contained in the Scriptures they would have more easily believed the witnesses to the resurrection. Those witnesses' message would have been consonant with the hope contained in the Scriptures. But Jesus did not spend long in this critique. It was in many ways understandable that the trauma of his own death had this result on them. So he moved on to giving them a new context in which the mission of his life made sense.
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he interpreted to them what referred to him
in all the Scriptures.
This revelation of Jesus was leading to something specific. It was not ultimately about military conquest of hostile aggressors like Rome as they might have thought. Rather, it was about that which would truly "redeem Israel", the sacrifice of the Lamb. And thus the culmination was to be found in the sacrificial banquet.
And it happened that, while he was with them at table,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him,
but he vanished from their sight.
Are our own hearts slow to believe what has been made known to us by prophets and apostles? We have before us, in the mass, the antidote. In the mass Jesus himself is present in the Scriptures, even if the homily is lackluster or not present. He himself speaks to those eager to hear through his word, to those who, like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, ask him, "Stay with us". Then, strengthened by what we hear in the Scriptures, Jesus reveals himself to us no less than to them in the breaking of the bread. He can bring us to new and deeper faith in him at every mass if we but take him seriously. Let's repent of our slowness to embrace this Easter joy and welcome the risen Lord into our hearts.
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