The Journey of the Disciples
Doesn’t being A Christian mean somehow that we have met the risen Christ, that we live now not just for him, but with Him?
Every Easter season we read the passage of Luke’s Gospel about two disciples on their way to Emmaus, a town outside Jerusalem. This Gospel account is about a journey that often reflects our own lives. On this journey a man joins the two disciples of Jesus as they walk and discuss the terrible events that had just happened to Jesus in Jerusalem. They do not recognize this man but they welcome him. The stranger inquires of them why they seem so sad. And they ask ‘have you not heard what they did to Jesus the Nazarene? A prophet mighty in in deeds and word!’
And then this stranger explains the Scriptures to them starting with Moses and all the prophets.
He asks: “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his Glory?”
So well did this man interpret the scriptures for them that their hearts were burning within them, yet they still did not recognize that this man who joined them was Jesus, their Lord and Messiah.
Isn’t our faith sometimes like this? We try living with Christian values, with Christian ideals, and yet we often live our lives without recognizing that Christ is with us on our journey.
Unfortunately we as Christians often do not know our sacred story, our holy past, because of this we do not know who we are.
Questions of who I am, where do I come from, why am I the way I am, are fundamental and existential questions!
We need to ask this about our Christian identity too. We must not be cut off from our sacred past. Cardinal Ouellete of Quebec has often spoken to the youth telling them that they should know their heritage, know who they are, and who they are called to be.
This Easter, during the Saturday night vigil, after reading many passages of sacred scripture, (our sacred story of salvation), 11 people became Catholic, four were Baptized, then confirmed with five others, and two made a profession of Catholic faith. It was a beautiful celebration, it was a celebration of the light of the risen Christ we had come to encounter.
To get to this point of entering the Church each of these people had to discover the sacred story of the faith, and thus discover too who they were before God; they were called to encounter Christ who was calling them to be disciples.
Jesus gives us complete freedom however to invite him into our lives, to be Children in the Risen Son. Like the disciple at Emmaus, we must not miss our chance to invite him to stay with us. When the the three travelers arrived in Emmaus, Jesus seems to take his leave of them, but the two Disciples ask him to stay and eat supper with them. Lucky for us Jesus hesitates long enough for them to call out to him. Jesus is always waiting for us to call out to him. It is only when Jesus breaks bread with the two that they recognize him.
What does it mean to have the name of Christian? It means that our hearts should be burning within at our encounter with the risen Lord. This can only happen if we come to recognize him. Like the disciples of Emmaus we will recognize him at the breaking of the bread.
Christ is risen and he is among us. Our sacred story, the history that gives us our identity, is celebrated and given full significance at the breaking of the bread, at the Eucharistic Table, where we know that Christ is manifesting himself. Christ is coming to our encounter.
The whole episode of this Gospel passage of Emmaus is a foreshadowing of our Eucharistic liturgy, of the way we are called to allow Christ to assure us of his continued work of grace in our lives. We celebrate his word and then we renew ourselves at his divine supper. Only then can we too go out and proclaim truly ‘the Lord is risen indeed, and has shown himself to us; we have encountered him, we have celebrated him together. We know who we are, we are his brothers and sisters, disciples and Children of God.
It is less knowing who we are, as much as it is having found a way of being. The following is a meditation by Fr. Robert Barron, whose books and tapes are well worth the investment and can be found at http://www.wordonfire.org/
The first words spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of John are addressed to two former disciples of John the Baptist: “What are you looking for” (John 1:38)? They respond, somewhat surprisingly, “Where are you staying?” One might expect that, in the presence of this new rabbi, they would have answered, “the truth” or “enlightenment” or “peace.” Instead, they answer the question elliptically with another question– and this odd non-answer is, in fact, the key to the exchange, What they seek, what they want to know, is not so much the teaching or wisdom or perspective of the rabbi; they want to know him, more to the point, precisely where and how he lives.
In the mystical vocabulary of John’s Gospel, the verb menein (stay or remain) refers to the source of one’s life and meaning. Thus, Jesus says that he remains with the Father, drawing his being from him, and he promises that he and the Father will remain with believers, feeding and nurturing them. Therefore, in asking where he “stays,” the disciples are wondering about the form of life that sustains him, the source of his power.
Obviously pleased by their response, Jesus says encouragingly, “Come and see” (John 1:39). And then, John tells us, “they came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.” In this simple and understated narrative, we see that the form of Christian discipleship is not primarily listening or learning but rather moving into the “house” of Jesus, discerning his mode of life, being with him at close quarters.
After this visit with the rabbi from Nazareth, one of the disciples — now identified as Andrew — emerges with enthusiasm, running to his brother Simon and exclaiming, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41). It seems clear that the body (staying with him) in a significant sense conditions the mind (“he is the Messiah”), the way of life shaping the conviction.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus certainly teaches his disciples, but the instruction always takes place in the far more elemental context of following him, as though the learning would never take place uncoupled from the life. In a word, Jesus invites his friends into an apprenticing relationship with him, encouraging them to “catch” his way of being through proximity, imitation, and love. And the processes that we traced in our examples above — practicing, watching patiently, repeating, disciplining the body are all at work as one is grafted onto Christ.
The way of Jesus has, over the centuries, given rise to myriad expressions in theology, liturgy, architecture, poetry, ethics, and spirituality. Staying with Jesus has resulted in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, the Divine Comedy of Dante, Cologne Cathedral, the life of St. Antony of the Desert, the silence and suffering of John of the Cross, and the radical nonviolence of Dorothy Day.
What can be lost or forgotten is the connection of all of these to the originating apprenticeship, to the form of life from which they flowed. Thus, Dorothy Day’s protest against a culture predicated upon militarism arose, not simply from her reflection, but from the conditioning of her body through a lifetime of spiritual exercises; and Thomas Aquinas said explicitly that the depth of his theological analysis came, not so much from the acuity of his mind, as from the intensity of his prayer.
Both Dorothy and Thomas were disciples who had “come and seen”; both had stayed with the Master and learned, through practice, a new way of being in the world.
Sounds like Fr Barron is a smart man. Thank you for the resource. May your way of being always keep you in the presence of the risen Lord.
Not to beat you over the head, Fr. Stephen, but your essay is shot through with verbs of cognition, knowing and recognizing: “We do not know who we are…” “Youth…should know their heritage, know who they are, and who they are called to be….” “This can only happen if we come to recognize him….” That’s all left brain activity, the sort of knowledge that Paul warns of in 1 Corinthians: 10:12: “So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” I think many would argue with you Father that the Christians who are in the most danger of losing their belief, are precisely those secure in the “knowledge” of their faith, whose Christianity threatens to be nothing more than a form of religious self affirmation.
Romano Guardini argued that “(Being a Christian) is movement. I can become a Christian only as long as I am conscious of the possibility of falling away. The gravest danger is not failure of the will to accomplish a certain thing, with God’s help I can always pull myself together and begin again. The real danger is that of becoming within myself unchristian, and it is greatest when my will is most sure of itself. I have absolutely no guarantee that I shall be privileged to remain a follower of Christ save in the manner of beginning, of being en route, of becoming, trusting, hoping and praying.”
Here is Flannery O’Connor in one of her letters reflecting on Faith and how one does not come to it by knowing: “Robert Bridges once wrote Gerald Manley Hopkins and asked him to tell him how he, Bridges, could believe. He must have expected from Hopkins a long, philosophical answer. Hopkins wrote back, “Give alms.” He was trying to say to Bridges that God is to be experienced in Charity (in the sense of love for the divine images in human beings). Don’t get entangled with intellectual difficulties that you fail to look for God in this way. …If you want your faith, you have to work for it. It is a gift, but for very few is it a gift given without any demand for equal time devoted to its cultivation…To find out about faith you have to go to the people who have it and you have to go to the most intelligent ones if you are going to stand up intellectually to agnostics and the general run of pagans that you are going to find in the majority of people around you…Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It’s there, even when he can’t see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there…Your faith will keep you free – not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than you own intellect or the intellects of those around you.”
Fr. Barron again: “Dorothy Day once said that everything a baptized person does should be, directly or indirectly, related to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the imprisoned, visit the sick, bury the dead (the corporal works); counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, bear patiently the troublesome, comfort the afflicted, forgive offenses, pray for the living and the dead (the spiritual works). … Following Jesus is not, for her, a matter of inner states or private convictions, still less an embrace of gassy abstractions such as “peace and justice.” Rather it is a set of very definite, embodied practices, things that one does on behalf of another….. It is remarkably difficult to cling to the illusion that your life is about you when you are focused, body and soul, on the needs of another.”
I listened to a wonderful homily by Fr. Erikson, the Vicar General of the Boston Archdiocese, who said that he had always thought he should be concerned about his relationship with God and only recently learned that it was God’s relationship with him that should have been the true focus of his Christian life. There is a great deal to be learned by taking gassy abstractions about discipleship and standing them on their head.
God bless you, Father.