The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
I see myself walking with the two disciples in today’s Gospel. Two weeks after Easter, we recount the rumors that say Jesus is risen. Somehow I am to understand that we have entered the Easter season. Though to me, it still feels like Lent. The two disciples traveling on the road to Emmeaus have heard stories that Christ is alive...but is He? Surely if Jesus was alive they would know because life would be different...maybe better?
As I find myself still short of many of the comforts and freedoms I gave up during the Lenten season, it is easy to ask the Lord, “Has anything really changed?” Christ, in His dying breath, proclaimed, “It is finished!” Yet I am still here looking for a resolution.
Perhaps I am more like many of the Jews at that time: expecting the Savior to look different, to fix the things that I want changed. In searching for a miracle that looks like the one I want, I am ignoring the one I received — the one I need. Christ made Himself known in the breaking of the bread only after He had first been invited in to the home of the two travelers. I spent so much time waiting for God to change my circumstances that I forgot to invite Him into them. In Christ, the work of salvation is finished, though at the same time, unfinished: it still requires our participation.
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened Scriptures to us?” the disciples exclaim to each other. Christ is inviting us today to take part in a personal relationship with Him. Whatever happens, we are known and loved by a God who has destroyed sin and death. He wants to speak to us, to dive into scripture with us. The Lord is calling each of us to something new. Whether you have spent this time reinventing yourself, or have felt so overwhelmed you struggle to get up in the morning: you have a place in this story. Jesus has defeated sin and death and is calling us to participate in this new day. We must now ask ourselves: what does this look like for me?