[Pearls Ep 168: Preparing for Sunday.]
We are looking at 3 key aspects of how we can connect with the Emmaus episode in prayer. Specifically, we are looking at ways that might open up new dimensions of relating with Christ, especially in our losses and trials.
Today we look at the first key, which is that the Emmaus episode is about our losses.
Recall that coming into Easter, the message was that Christ has new life for us. Following Easter, the Gospels have a particular focus on Christ, in essence, saying “trust me to deliver on that promise.”
That is certainly the message of Emmaus, where Jesus teaches us to trust Him with our most grievous losses and disappointments.
Fr. Henri Nouwen has a good reflection on that aspect of Emmaus (in “With Burning Hearts”). On a side note, Nouwen is one of those troubling figures who tended to go down the path eastern mysticism and new agey modernist mumbo jumbo. On a side note to that side note, Nouwen is like Fr. Thomas Merton and Fr. Richard Rohr (though not as bad) who also go down the mumbo jumbo route and you never see them wearing their clerics. What is it about these guys resisting the collar? They are priests after all! They are set apart whether they like it or not. It came with the vows. Wearing polo shirts and cardigan sweaters is just goofy.
But Fr. Henri Nouwen’s reflection on Emmaus is mostly reliable, particularly when he zeros in on the concept of loss. In the postscript we’ve included a brief excerpt on the relationship between loss, resentment, our fallen nature and how Christ desires to deliver us from all of that through the Eucharist.
Nouwen emphasizes the truism that life is continual string losses. A big part of the spiritual life is coming to grips with that. I recall a crusty old judge saying, “It’s written over a hundred times in the Bible that ‘and so it came to pass,’ and never once is it written, ‘and so it came to stay the same.’”
Loss is what the two disciples were experiencing. In fact only Cleopas is named. And there are those who suspect the other disciple was Mary, his wife, and one of the women who remained with Christ at the Cross. Two things are certain: (1) these disciples were very close to Christ, and (2) we are invited to place ourself in the position of the unnamed disciple.
This passage occurs on Sunday, just two days after Christ’s crucifixion, and the disciples don’t know what to make of reports of His body missing from the tomb, but they don’t seem to take much comfort from this. In short, their heads are spinning with thoughts that their Messiah has been executed and they face an uncertain future, that may well include their own persecution.
Wherever we are in life, we can enter into this scripture with our losses.
We’ll see on Monday and Tuesday (and in the Pearls video) unique ways at how we can bring our losses to Christ through this passage. Or, if you are in a place right now of relative tranquility (praise God), it’s an opportunity to reflect on past losses and appreciate anew how Christ worked through them. You’ll then have that as one of your own spiritual pearls, to share with others for their encouragement and to go back to as a source of conviction for yourself when the next loss comes, as they inevitably do.
Easter blessings –
Steve and Karen Smith
Postscript: Henri Nouwen on Emmaus and Loss
Resentment is one of the most destructive forces in our lives. It is cold anger that has settled into the center of our being and hardened our hearts. Resentment can become a way of life that so pervades our words and actions that we no longer recognize it as such.
I often wonder how I would live if there were no resentment at all in my heart. I am so used to talking about people I do not like, to harboring memories about events that gave me much pain, or our acting with suspicion and fear that I do not know how it would be if there were nothing to complain about and nobody to gripe about! My heart still has many corners that hide my resentments and I wonder if I really want to be without them. What would I do without these resentments?
The Eucharist begins with the cry for mercy, “Lord, have mercy”. This cry for mercy is possible only when we are willing to confess that somehow, somewhere, we ourselves have something to do with our losses. Crying for mercy is a recognition that blaming God, the world, or others for our losses does not do full justice to the truth of who we are. At the moment we are willing to take responsibility, even for the pain we didn’t cause directly; blaming is converted into an acknowledgment of our own role in human brokenness.
Celebrating the Eucharist requires that we stand in this world accepting our co-responsibility for the evil that surrounds and pervades us. As long as we remain stuck in our complaints about the terrible times in which we live and the terrible situations we have to bear and the terrible fate we have to suffer, we can never come to contrition. And contrition can grow only out of a contrite heart. When our losses are pure fate, our gains are pure luck! Fate does not lead to contrition, nor luck to gratitude.
The disciples traveling to Emmaus have a mix of despair and hope. That’s how we generally approach the Eucharist. With a strange mixture of despair and hope. Part of us looking at our own life and the lives of those around us wants to say, “Let’s forget about it. It’s all over. ….. And still – the other stories remain and continue to appear. Stories about a few people who saw it differently, stories about gestures of forgive- ness and healing, stories about goodness, beauty, and truth. And as we listen carefully to the deeper voices in our heart we realize that beneath our skepticism and cynicism there is a yearning for love, unity, and communion that doesn’t go away even when there remain so many arguments to dismiss it as sentimental childhood memories.