By

Jean Padula

April 6, 2006
Text of Reflection:  

A First Supper

Today’s Gospel from Luke is one of my favorites. I can easily sympathize with those two discouraged, bewildered disciples walking down that dusty road. With Jesus’ death on the cross, everything they had hoped for and believed in had been snatched away and was replaced by a mystifying tangle of questions and uncertainties.

The disciples didn’t get Easter. Their finite human minds could not comprehend a God so loving and powerful; that He’d do for them what Jesus had just done, with His life, death and resurrection. Perhaps we never would have figured it out if He hadn’t come back to reveal it to us, as He did several times before His Ascension.

On this particular day, Jesus joined His disciples on their walk and opened their minds to what had transpired over the many generations and over the last few days. Their doubts and confusion were replaced with at an encouraging sense of the assurances of Easter. They felt God’s Word alive, burning in their hearts. The disciples came to understand in a new, personal way that God loves each of us and desires our fellowship.

Similarly, Jesus journeys with us, and we are assured we will continue to experience His victorious presence in our lives. There really is a plan and our lives do have a purpose. Best of all, Jesus has conquered death, and we can look forward to an everlasting life with Him and a reunion with our loved ones who have  already passed from the earth.

As Luke describes, this remarkable day started with a seemingly ordinary encounter between two downcast disciples and an apparent stranger; conversing as they walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus. It concluded with a first supper where the temporal and spiritual worlds mysteriously merged in a life-giving sacrament that would bond a believing community and its Savior together for all time.