Understanding our Faith

Easter – Emmaus – Eucharist

On the third Sunday of Easter in Year A (Sunday, 23 April), the readings for Mass offer us the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

This is a very significant passage of St Luke’s Gospel.  In this gospel passage we find described the process which we go through every time we go to Mass.  As Cleopas and his friend walk along in disillusionment at the death of Jesus, a ‘stranger’ joins them on their journey and taking stock of their disillusionment, he explains to them that the Scriptures indicated that the Messiah “would suffer and so enter into his glory.”  That is, this stranger takes them through a ‘Liturgy of the Word’ leading them to recognise that the death of Jesus and their disillusionment is not the end of things.  At the end of the passage, they say “Were not our hearts burning within us as he talked to us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?”

As the two disciples reached their destination, they pressed the stranger to stay with them.  The passage goes on “Now while he was with them at table, he took the bread and said the blessing, then he broke it and handed it to them.  And their eyes were opened and they recognised him; but he had vanished from their sight.”

Following the liturgy of the word he took them through the action that we can call the Liturgy of the Eucharist.  In this gospel of the road to Emmaus we have a miniature of what is presented to us at Mass, of what we do at Mass.

Those two disciples recognised him in ‘the breaking of the bread’ which was St Luke’s name for what we would call the Eucharist or the Mass.  St Luke is telling those for whom he initially wrote and ourselves about what is being given to us as we celebrate the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist.  We are invited to recognise him in the breaking of the bread.

The action of the breaking of the bread – which of course we still do at Mass – was considered so important that it gave its name to the whole of the Eucharistic action.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin