Walking Away from Jerusalem When All Seemed Lost

On the day of the Resurrection (Easter Sunday), two of Jesus's disciples were walking away from Jerusalem.

They may have been going home — we do not know. Luke tells us their destination was a village called Emmaus, seven miles out, and that is almost all he tells us. What we know is what they were leaving: the city where Jesus had been arrested, tried, and executed. The empty tomb the women had reported that morning. The hope they had carried for three years was now uncertain in a way that made staying feel impossible.

So they walked.

Luke names one of them — Cleopas, a Greek name that could have belonged to someone who was or was not Jewish. The other disciple goes unnamed. Not once does Luke tell us who this person was — man or woman, close friend or stranger, someone who had followed Jesus for years or someone who had only just arrived. The tradition has never tried to fill that silence in. I have always read it as an invitation. The unnamed person in this story is you.

A stranger joins them on the road. He asks what they are talking about. They stop walking. Cleopas looks at him and says: Are you the only person in Jerusalem who doesn't know what has been happening here?

The stranger asks what things.

They tell him everything. Jesus of Nazareth. The miracles. The arrest. The cross. The women at the tomb this morning. And then the sentence that carries the whole weight of the story: "We were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel" (Lk 24:21, NABRE). Past tense. We were hoping. The thing they had organized their lives around had come apart. And now they were walking.

You hear that sentence, and you recognize it. Anyone who has ever organized their life around something that came apart knows exactly what it feels like to say we were hoping in the past tense. It might have been a marriage. A diagnosis. A faith that quietly dissolved somewhere between childhood and adulthood. The walking away is rarely dramatic. It is just the next thing you do when hope runs out.

The stranger begins to talk. He walks them through the Scriptures — from Moses through the prophets — showing them how everything that had happened was not a derailment but a fulfillment: "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" (Lk 24:26). Seven miles is a long time to listen. They listened the whole way.

When they reach the village, the stranger acts as if he is going further. They ask him to stay. It is almost evening, they say. The day is nearly over. He comes in and sits down at table with them.

He takes bread. He blesses it. He breaks it. He gives it to them.

And in that gesture — in that specific, familiar action — "their eyes were opened and they recognized him" (Lk 24:31). The stranger was Jesus. In living color. Present on the road. Present in the Scriptures. Present at the table. Seven miles. Every word. Every act of love. The whole time.

And then he vanishes.

That is the part nobody warns you about. You finally see clearly — and then it is gone. The presence you spent seven miles walking toward disappears before you can hold onto it. Days later, Jesus would say it to Thomas: "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed" (Jn 20:29). The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were already living that beatitude without knowing it. They believed before they saw. They felt the burning before they had a name for it.

They turn to each other: "Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?" (Lk 24:32). They had felt something the entire walk. They just did not know what they were feeling.

Faith is not only the moment of recognition. It is also what you do after he vanishes.

They get up immediately and head back to Jerusalem. Seven miles. At night. Running toward the thing they had been walking away from.

For Catholics, this is not just a beautiful story about two disciples on one afternoon. It is the shape of the encounter with Christ — the road, the conversation, the table, the recognition.

It is also the shape of the Mass. Every Sunday, the Church follows the same pattern the stranger laid out on that road. First, the Liturgy of the Word — the Scriptures opened, proclaimed, and broken open for the people in the room. Then the Liturgy of the Eucharist — the bread taken, blessed, broken, and given. The same sequence. The same two movements. Whether you have never set foot inside a Mass or have been going your whole life, you are already inside this story.

The disciples did not recognize Jesus in an argument or a declaration. They recognized him at a table, in the breaking of bread, at the end of a long day, when they had almost given up.

That is worth sitting with. You do not have to have everything figured out. You do not have to be certain. You do not even have to know where you are going — or why. The stranger has a way of catching up.

Let us pray. Lord, walk with us on the roads we are on. Open to us what we have not yet understood. And at the table, open our eyes to see who is with us. Amen.

Next week: The image Jesus chose for himself — shepherd and sheep — and what it means that he uses it at all.

Tags: #CatholicFaith #Scripture #NewToTheFaith