Jesus, where are you?
Monday, June 23, 2014
*Rogelio Zelada
The Gospel writers have preserved a rich storyline in the background of their stories, born from the many questions presented by the Christian communities. Through those questions, we track the concerns and the problems of those who were learning to be Christians. As in a tapestry observed from behind, the actions, assertions and precepts from Christ gathered in the Gospels reveal a strong and important intention to shed light on the initial steps of the first generation of believers after the Resurrection.
That’s how we see Luke responding to a pressing concern of his church: “You met the Lord, you were able to hear and touch him, but where can we find him?”
The account of the disciples of Emmaus (Lk. 24, 13-32) tries to give us clear and certain clues to achieve this. The entire scene, framed initially in the darkness of despondency, tries to answer that question: Christ walks at our side all the time, and we find him by our side in every moment of our life journey; he contrives an apparently chance meeting, and never stops looking for us and drawing us in by all means possible, even though we seldom realize it (in the story of the prodigal son, also found in the Gospel of Luke, the father begins to persuade him through his need for food, with the envious hunger that he feels when he realizes that the pigs are eating better than he does).
We also find the Lord in the proclamation of the Word of God; the Risen One, present in there, makes the Christ that lives in our heart quiver, in a luminous harmony of intense evangelical resonance. The Jesus of history becomes history in our lives when we allow the reading of the Word to penetrate our morals, our values and response to life.
The core of Luke’s story also invites us to be hospitable and accepting. “They pressed him to stay with them saying, ‘It is nearly evening, and the day is almost over.’” Christ is in the embracing attitude towards the stranger, the pilgrim who is acknowledged as a neighbor and is received with affection at home. That is why he can take advantage of the night in the breaking of the bread, so illuminating that they do not need to see the Lord as a pilgrim anymore. The Eucharist is his ultimate presence, the transforming nourishment that moves us to adopt the same feelings of dedication that are present and permanent throughout Jesus’ entire life.
Now that the disciples have recovered their faith, they feel a sense of urgency that makes them retrace the journey to Jerusalem, this time without the support of the caravan and in the midst of the apparent darkness of the night on the day of the Resurrection. They go back to the community of the Risen One, which they had left in their disillusionment, to their gathered brothers, where the Lord is also present among them.
With the story of the disciples of Emmaus, Luke leaves us a sure map to finding the Lord Jesus, always present on the road that we must follow, in the Living Word of God, in the Eucharist celebrated in the family of faith, in the brotherly embrace of the helpless, and in the community of believers that is the Church of Christ.
To his community, and to us, the author of the Gospel of Matthew will remind us that at every single moment, the Christian should have his sight ready to recognize the Lord in the hungry, the foreigner without a roof, in the sick, in the incarcerated, in the one who is alone, broken and abandoned (Mt. 31; 46). This is his way of answering the same question: Jesus, where are you?
