Have you ever had an “Aha” moment, when something you didn’t understand suddenly became crystal clear?
“Sin makes you stupid,” as the adage goes (see Ps 24:9), but it can also become an occasion for repentance and growth. In His divine wisdom, God often punishes us by letting us have our own way. And when we become aware of our stupidity, the Good Lord mercifully offers us opportunities to turn from our sinful ways, because we’re more likely to listen and learn when we’ve been humbled.
In this regard, the importance of two key lines can be missed in today’s Gospel, lines which allude to the first Adam and original sin with its spiritual death, and also show how Jesus, the “second Adam,” provides us the way to eternal life (Rom 5:17–18).
Two Disciples
On that first Easter Sunday, the Risen Jesus encounters two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus, a town seven miles northwest of Jerusalem. Like Mary Magdalene (John 20:14), they don’t at first grasp the Lord’s presence: “Their eyes were prevented from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16).
Their blindness recalls the sin of our first parents. Satan, “the father of lies” (John 8:44) and “deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 20:9), tempted Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit: “God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil” (Gen 24:5). Instead of retreating to “the tree of life” in the center of the garden (Gen 24:9), Adam and Eve go their own way, becoming painfully aware of their sin and resultant rupture with God: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Gen 24:7).
Descendants
As descendants of Adam and Eve, we contract their sinful human nature, deprived of sanctifying grace and vulnerable to sin and ignorance regarding the truth which is their antidote (see Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], nos. 404–405).
Through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, Jesus overcomes sin, death, and the devil, enabling us to partake of Him, the fruit of the new tree of life, as some of the early Church Fathers described Our Lord and His associated Cross. After enlightening the two disciples about how Scripture speaks of Him (Luke 24:27), Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, and gives bread to them, actions that recall both His multiplication of loaves (Matt 14:19) and His Passover rite at the Last Supper (Matt 26:26; Luke 22:19).
Living Bread
“With that their eyes were opened, and they recognized him,” Luke tells us, “But he vanished from their sight” (Luke 24:31). Sometime before the Last Supper, Jesus proclaims, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. . .. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” (John 6:51, 54).
Now, on that first Easter Sunday, Jesus celebrates anew the offering of His body and blood under the appearances of bread and wine, a sacred ritual which He enjoined on His apostles to do in remembrance of Him (Luke 22:19–20). This is the Mass, the renewal of Christ’s one Eucharistic Sacrifice, the New Covenant Passover (Luke 22:15; CCC 1339–1340), and, as it is also known, “the breaking of the bread” (Acts 2:42; 20:7).
Made Known
And what happens? Jesus vanishes. Why? He’s let His two disciples know how He will remain most profoundly with them (see Matt: 28:20). He disappears to draws us in faith to become more intimately one with Him in receiving the Holy Eucharist (CCC 1346–1347). And so, they returned to Jerusalem, proclaiming to the apostles and others how Jesus was “made known to them in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:35).
During this Easter Octave and always, let us partake of and proclaim how Jesus is made known to us in the breaking of the bread, so that many, many others may draw near to Him, be reconciled through Baptism and/or Confession as needed, and join us in joyful exultation, “The Lord has truly been raised!” (Luke 24:34).
Thank You Tom. Wonderfully done.
If we consider that the two on the road to Emmaus were not at the Last Supper, the Eucharist miracle that opened their eyes has an independent testimony of its reality. There, it was not a remembrance, since they were not with Jesus on Holy Thursday but a revelation of His post resurrection Real Presence. Jesus took bread, blesses it and without declaring it to be His body, they nevertheless came to know Him in the breaking of the Bread. God Bless you Tom.