In the Emmaus story from the Gospel of Luke, read at Mass in the first days of the Easter season, pain and sacrifice are transformed by the presence of Love Incarnate.
By looking at the parallels between this story and the life of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, we can see how this story applies to each one of us — at Easter and beyond.
The Emmaus Gospel reading begins with two people leaving Jerusalem on the first Easter Sunday, deep in conversation, toward the town of Emmaus, seven miles away. We only know the name of one of the disciples, Cleopas. In Christian commentary and art throughout the centuries, it is assumed that they are two men.
But recently, theologians are seeing these two as a man and a woman, a married couple.
In their remarkable book Walking With God: A Journey Through the Bible, Tim Gray and Jeff Cavins describe the two as a married couple.
After all, they are going to the same place where they both seem to live, and they are “conversing and debating” as they walk along the way.
They acknowledge that Jesus calls them “O foolish men!” in the text of many translations, but they point out that other translations follow the cue in the Greek original text and don’t use masculine pronouns.
They also note that in the Gospel of John the wife of “Clopas” was among the women mourning Jesus. Many biblical scholars and early Church Fathers believe that Clopas (in John) and Cleopas (in Luke) refer to the same man.
“Since Clopas/Cleopas was a rare name, and Cleopas is a disciple of Jesus, it is not hard to imagine that there is a wife of Clopas who also is in Jerusalem for the Passover,” they say. And it seems likely that if one left Jerusalem, the other would have gone too.
In fact, following their lead, Father Mike Schmitz calls them “Mr. and Mrs. Clopas” on Day 131 of his popular Bible in a Year podcast.
One of the world’s leading scripture scholars, the Anglican theologian N.T. Wright, also treats the Emmaus disciples as a married couple, and he adds a twist to the mystery.
“Consider,” he says, “how Luke has used this story to balance the story he told way back at the beginning of his gospel about another husband and wife, Mary and Joseph.”
When, after three days of searching, Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the Temple, they are confused and distressed, but the young Jesus explains that he “must be in his Father’s house” – helping them to understand his divine mission
And in a third parallel, from the beginning in Genesis, the first couple Adam and Eve hide in shame, but God seeks them out and questions them — just as Jesus now draws near to Cleopas and his companion as He leads them to the truth of God’s plan.
To sum up, if the Emmaus disciples are a married couple, they are a fitting completion to the story of salvation that began in the Garden of Eden.
Whether or not they are a married couple, these disciples are clearly hurting.
They don’t recognize Jesus — perhaps because he hid his appearance from them miraculously, or perhaps because they were too focused on their pain and hopelessness to see what was right in front of their eyes.
“What are you discussing as you walk along?” Jesus asks them.
Cleopas is incredulous. “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know?” he asks. He says that Jesus, “a prophet,” was crucified by authorities, “but we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”
They have clearly misunderstood what the mission of Jesus is. He came to show them that the pathway to joy runs through sacrificial love, and that the pain of death is redeemed by faith.
“Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” he asks them.
In fact, this is a lesson St. Elizabeth Ann Seton learned when she and her husband went to Italy in hopes that the climate would help heal him. Instead of finding a cure, he died there. But his death was transformed by faith.
“The last twenty-four hours are the happiest I have ever seen or could ever expect, as the most earnest wish of my heart was fulfilled,” Elizabeth wrote of her husband’s prayerful last days. “Willy’s heart seemed to be nearer to me for being nearer to his God.”
The Emmaus disciples are so moved by the words of the stranger — Jesus — that they don’t want him to leave.
“As they approached the village,” says the Gospel reading, “he gave the impression that he was going on further, but they urged him, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.’”
He does stay with them — but not in the way they are expecting.
“He went in to stay with them,” says the Gospel, and then “while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.”
Jesus goes in to stay with them — and with all of us — but will do so in his Eucharistic presence from now on.
This is what happened to Elizabeth Seton in Italy, too. Her eyes were opened and she recognized Jesus in the Eucharist. She saw how Jesus stayed with her Catholic hosts, and wanted the same thing for herself.
“How happy would we be if we believed what these dear souls believe, that they possess God in the Sacrament and that he remains in their churches and is carried to them when they are sick,” she wrote. “The other day in a moment of excessive distress, I fell on my knees without thinking when the Blessed Sacrament passed by and cried in an agony to God to bless me if he was there, that my whole soul desired only him.”
The encounter with Jesus led the Emmaus disciples, and Elizabeth, into the arms of the Church.
In the Emmaus Gospel passage, the disciples say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Full of their new understanding, despite the late hour, “they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the Eleven.”
Encountering Jesus Christ in his sacrament drove them to encounter him in his fledgling Church. There, they “recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
Elizabeth did the same thing and told others how she had met her Lord in the Eucharist.
“My dearest Rebecca,” she wrote home, “only think what a comfort. They go to Mass here every morning! — Ah, how often you and I used to … say, ‘no more till next Sunday,’ as we turned from the church door which closed on us.”
She began the process of entering the Catholic Church, and there she found the constant company of the Lord she had so often sought. She had sought that communion when she married her husband; she would finally find it when she married the Bridegroom, Christ, in religious life.
“Surely the next blessing in our future existence to that of being near the source of Perfection, will be the enjoyment of each other’s Society without dread of interruption,” she wrote. “No separation, but free communication of affection unshackled by the whys and wherefores of this world.”
This is what we all seek in life — and what we encounter “on the way,” like the Emmaus disciples, when the Risen Jesus finds us in our daily life in his Blessed Sacrament, in every tabernacle and at every Mass.
TOM HOOPES, author most recently of The Rosary of Saint John Paul II, is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Kansas, where he teaches. He hosts The Extraordinary Story podcast about the life of Christ. His book What Pope Francis Really Said is now available on Audible. A former reporter in the Washington, D.C., area, he served as press secretary for the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee Chairman and spent 10 years as editor of the National Catholic Register newspaper and Faith & Family magazine. His work frequently appears in the Register, Aleteia, and Catholic Digest. He lives in Atchison, Kansas, with his wife, April, and has nine children.
Image:The Pilgrims of Emmaus on the Road, James Tissot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This reflection was previously published. To view all of our Seton Reflections, click here.