Luke 24.13–35 ESV – On the Road to Emmaus – Bible Gateway
In the Gospel of Mark, the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is limited to just Mark 16:12–13:
12 After these things he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. 13 And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.
In Mark, neither disciple is named or their destination. We can be thankful for the extensive treatment Luke gives this beautiful story. This occurs later on the same day as the Resurrection. There are disputes on the location of Emmaus and just how far it was from Jerusalem. But these same disciples could apparently return to Jerusalem to meet with the Apostles on the same night.
16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
Jimmy Akin comments on this in a post on The Post-Resurrection Appearances of Jesus.
In the case of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–32), it was because they were deliberately stopped from recognizing him. The text explicitly tells us that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:19). In order to teach them a lesson and make a big impact with it, Jesus stopped them from recognizing him so that he could do what a cinematographer would call a “dramatic reveal.” (There is also a likely element of playfulness here.)
He also mentions that “Philosophers call the kind of situation where you look at something but don’t notice or recognize it “non-cognitive seeing.”” Jimmy also goes into the parallels with other Gospel instances where people close to him failed to recognize him after the Resurrection.
They interacted with Jesus where “they consider themselves to be more knowledgeable than this visitor, who seems ignorant of the things that have taken place.”[1] and later “Now there is a role reversal regarding who is knowledgeable and who is ignorant, as it is the stranger’s turn to give an explanation. Regarding faith, he upbraids them for being slow of heart to believe Scripture. If they truly believed all that the prophets spoke, then they would have believed what the women spoke.”[2]
I found what Brant Pitre says on this is instructive:
Number one, notice he does upbraid them. He does rebuke them and he says “you foolish men, slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken.” Now I remember years ago when I was doing a video on this—like a lecture—on the road to Emmaus, I made a mistake. I said that Jesus upbraided them for not knowing the Scriptures. And somebody came up to me after the talk and said “Dr. Pitre, I don’t mean to be rude but I think you made a mistake. Jesus does not upbraid them for not knowing the Scriptures, he upbraids them for not believing the Scriptures.” And that’s true. That’s exactly what he said. They, as Jews, they would’ve known the prophets. The problem is they don’t believe. They are lacking faith.[3]
This got me to thinking about knowledge and living out the faith. If I pile up knowledge upon knowledge and don’t live out the faith, it is only an abstract game. I constantly need this reminder to let whatever knowledge I might have to strengthen and live out my faith. Looking at the world and the actions of members of the Church, it is easy to get dejected, forgetting that Jesus warned us of the cross to come and that faith often would not be comfy, but lived out in trust.
Peter Kreeft, in his commentary, writes:
And when Jesus interpreted all the passages in the Scriptures that referred to him, everything suddenly lit up for the two disciples and made sense, even the shocking prophecies that the Messiah would have to suffer. How did Jesus light up the Scriptures? What was Jesus’ method? We should imitate it. It really worked, for the text tells us that afterward, the two disciples said, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” Jesus spoke to the heart, not just to the head. He was not a scholarly professor; he was a lover interpreting a love letter. And the disciples got it because their hearts were seeking it, their hearts were right, their hearts were in love with the right thing, the thing the Messiah was designed to bring them: salvation from sin; sanctity, charity, love. Jesus’ explanation worked because it was heart to heart, not just head to head. And “heart” here means something much deeper than feeling or emotion. It was wisdom, intuition, spiritual intelligence, understanding, seeing deeply because you love deeply that which is most deeply worth loving.[4]
I have heard many lament that fact that we don’t know exactly what the passages Jesus referred to in the Old Testament were. Or how much they would have loved to hear Jesus’ exposition. I can join them in this desire, but I also think about the fact that how Jesus taught this is also very instructive. He was not just stringing a bunch of verses together to make his point.
Returning to Dr. Pitre:
Now why is that so important? Well for me personally, one of the reasons this is important is because it gives me the model of how to do biblical studies, of how to to teach about the Scriptures, to teach the word of God; which is this, always go back to the Old Testament. Always go back to the beginning. Always start with Genesis and walk through the Scriptures looking for the signs and the shadows that point forward to what God is going to do in Jesus Christ. In other words, Jesus’ method of interpreting the Scripture is you start with the Old Testament and you interpret it (what’s called) typologically. Typology means the study of Old Testament prefigurations (events, realities, signs and things) that point forward to and are fulfilled in the New Testament, in the new covenant of Jesus—in his life, his, death and his resurrection.[5]
It is also instructive that have this exegesis from Jesus, their eyes were not yet opened to seeing him. What happens next draws many parallels between events in Jesus’ ministry up to that point and to the future of the Church.
Dr. John Bergsma points out:
The disciples press Jesus to stay with them for the night, and at the evening meal, he “takes, blesses, breaks, and gives” the bread to those present. Luke employs this same sequence of four verbs in his account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand and at the Institution of the Eucharist; it became almost a technical phrase for Eucharistic celebration in the early Church. This helps us to understand the significance of their “recognition” of him and his sudden vanishing from their sight. This is meant as Eucharistic instruction for us: we should “recognize” Jesus in the broken bread and no longer seek for an apparition of him because he is truly present with us in the Eucharistic host.[6]
I remember that early in the days when I had shed my atheism and was searching for the church and not understanding what church I was searching for; I came across the story of the Emmaus road. When Jesus vanishes from their sight, this really hit me with the Eucharistic overtones. I did not know what the various understandings involving the Eucharist were in the various churches. I only knew that this was really important. This was something fundamental to what I was searching for. This was such an epiphany to me it burned the time and place in me. So it is not surprising that later it was the Eucharist I believed in, and the Catholic understanding of it, that was decisive for me.
Dr. Bergsma also writes:
To this day, Emmaus Road presents us with the ideal form of Mass.[7]
I also came across this in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture on Luke:
This meal at Emmaus is the first meal of the new creation.”[8]
That commentary also pointed out this paragraph from Pope Benedict’s XVI Verbum Domini: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church (30 September 2010)
Luke’s account of the disciples on the way to Emmaus enables us to reflect further on this link between the hearing of the word and the breaking of the bread… . The presence of Jesus, first with his words and then with the act of breaking bread, made it possible for the disciples to recognize him… . From these accounts it is clear that Scripture itself points us towards an appreciation of its own unbreakable bond with the Eucharist… . Word and Eucharist are so deeply bound together that we cannot understand one without the other: the word of God sacramentally takes flesh in the event of the Eucharist. The Eucharist opens us to an understanding of Scripture, just as Scripture for its part illumines and explains the mystery of the Eucharist.[9]
Pulling from the Catechism:
1346 The liturgy of the Eucharist unfolds according to a fundamental structure which has been preserved throughout the centuries down to our own day. It displays two great parts that form a fundamental unity: (CCC 103)
- the gathering, the liturgy of the Word, with readings, homily, and general intercessions;
- the liturgy of the Eucharist, with the presentation of the bread and wine, the consecratory thanksgiving, and communion
The liturgy of the Word and liturgy of the Eucharist together form “one single act of worship”; the Eucharistic table set for us is the table both of the Word of God and of the Body of the Lord.[10]
One last point, when I read in verse 24:16 that their eyes were opened, I wondered if this was an allusion to Genesis:
Whereas previously “their eyes were prevented from recognizing him” (24:16), now their eyes were opened. This exact expression (of three consecutive words in Greek) occurs elsewhere in Scripture only in the account of the fall in Genesis, which similarly occurs during a meal involving taking and giving and results in the recognition of a hidden reality: “The eyes of the two were opened, and they knew …” (Gen 3:7 NETS).[11]
References
- The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz
- Catholic Productions, Commentaries by Brant Pitre
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Cycle A
- The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year A – John Bergsma
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition
- Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
- The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz ↩
- ibid ↩
- Catholic Productions, Brant Pitre, Third Sunday in Easter, Year A ↩
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Cycle A, , Third Sunday in Easter ↩
- Catholic Productions, Brant Pitre, Third Sunday in Easter, Year A ↩
- The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year A, John Bergsma, Third Sunday in Easter ↩
- ibid ↩
- Arthur A. Just Jr., The Ongoing Feast: Table Fellowship and Eschatology at Emmaus (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993) ↩
- Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini 54–55. ↩
- Catholic Church. (2000). Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed). United States Catholic Conference. ↩
- The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz ↩
