Emmaus
Publish date 04-12-2024
There is a universal evangelical image that spans time, which restores the very concrete dimension of faith, but also of life. Jesus has just been condemned and killed. The apostles and disciples who had followed him disperse, at least momentarily, disoriented by pain and fear. There are two in particular who gather what remains of their dreams and decide to return home. The biblical story remembers them as the disciples of Emmaus. They had gone up to Jerusalem with Jesus, they too had invested everything in his words, perhaps they had left homes, family. For what? To see an ideal nailed to the cross.
They are walking, discussing among themselves. A man approaches. They do not recognize Jesus. "What are these discussions that you are having among yourselves as you walk?" "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days? Everything about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet powerful in deed and word, before God and all the people, as the chief priests and our leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and then crucified him. We hoped that he would be the one to free Israel. And instead…
“We hoped” is a key expression, so concrete and close to the experience of every man and woman. Especially today. We speak of hope, but steeped in disenchantment, of the abyss of never again. A hope conjugated with the past that paralyzes, in the long run embitters, closes the heart, the eyes, makes you spiral. Who doesn’t experience it sooner or later in life?
A big love, the man or woman with whom you built everything, maybe you started a family. You wake up one day and something has changed, moving forward seems meaningless. So the work for which you invested resources and talents, you spent yourself, you toiled. And the moment comes when you say to yourself: “Is that all?” A sudden illness that tears your limbs, a pain that runs through you, an unexpected event that you hadn’t counted on. For what? Why me? A lifelong commitment to peace, to disarmament, to justice. All useless in the face of a crazy world that suddenly decided to change direction.
“We hoped” is the most human thing there can be in some passages of the personal and collective journey. Anyone who denies it is a hypocrite. But that’s not the point, because the story has another ending. The disciples open up, vent, and are not afraid to put their hearts in the hands of that man who is so attentive and capable of listening. They even invite him to have dinner with them. He accepts, takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it and shares it. And in that precise moment they finally recognize him.
It is precisely this revelation that reactivates hope, the courage to retrace one’s steps, to pick up the thread of one’s motivations, to reinvigorate one’s testimony. It’s possible! Even in this complicated time, when we don’t understand everything, when hatred seems to have the last word and going against the current is a useless exercise. It isn’t!
In the story of the disciples of Emmaus there is each of us. When we experience it, let’s remember the ending…
Matteo Spicuglia
NP October 2024