Good post. I am a Christian and I have chosen the Catholic church as the place where I worship. The Word of God means so much to me as does the Eucharist.
If you do a careful reading of Luke's story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus your will find some great lessons on the power of the Word as it is meant to be applied to our live. It also contains the same Eucharistic gestures as Jesus offered at the Last Supper.
These thoughts are taken from a marvelous book called, "Making the Most of the Eucharist" by Frank Anderson
Journey to Emmaus – A Eucharistic Model
For these two disciples, walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, the wilderness of their lives was a reality. They had built their hopes and dreams on Jesus – now he was dead. Shattered and disillusioned, they were leaving Jerusalem, but were deeply engaged with each other in trying to fathom the meaning of it all:
... and they were talking together about all that had happened ... their faces downcast.
(Luke 24:14, 17)
What they were struggling with (and faithfully doing so) was the mystery of Jesus' life. What had it all meant? And what were the implications for themselves?
Our own hope had been that he would be the one to set Israel free. (Luke 24:21)
On joining them, Jesus simply takes them more carefully into the scriptures to see what bearing the Word of God might have on their present circumstance. He does no more than engage their lives with the Word. The enlightenment of the scriptures does have a profound impact on them, but we are only told about it later in the story:
Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us? (Luke 24:32) -
Jesus anoints their lives with the scriptures and they begin to see clearly again. Their experience of themselves-and of their predicament-changed dramatically. No longer "downcast," no longer so caught up in their own problems as to be unable to "recognize him," they now become capable of an unexpectedly gracious act of hesed (That God-like outpouring of love that enables them open themselves to this stranger) and emet (That faithful, trustworthy, unfailing love that enables them to offer hospitality to this stranger) on nearing their destination:
When they drew near to the village ... he made as if to go on; but they pressed him to stay with them saying, "It is nearly evening, and the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them. (Luke 24:28-29)
The story depicts Jesus as a total stranger, yet one who had shared with them an engagement with the Word of God. It was already late in the day. In an earlier Gospel story, Luke comments:
It was late afternoon when the Twelve came up to him and said, "Send the people away, and they can go to the villages and farms round about to find lodging and food (Luke 9:12-17)
This miracle story of the feeding of the crowds is common to Mark, Matthew, and John. The others all mention the crowd's need for food, but Luke is the only evangelist to include the need for lodging as well. Now here, in the Emmaus story, lodging for the night becomes an issue: "they pressed him to stay with them." One could conjecture that in Luke's mind these two searching disciples were unknowingly living out the very essence of that earlier eucharistic story, the feeding of the crowds.
Given that Luke is fascinated by the theme that life is a journey for us all, the prominence he gives to hospitality in these twinned stories is most significant: hesed and emet for travelers.
The Emmaus story climaxes with Jesus doing the eucharistic gesture. Luke employs four key eucharistic verbs-the same verbs used in the Last Supper story.
... he took the bread and said the blessing; then he broke it and handed it to them. (Luke 24:30)
The Emmaus story tells us that, startled by this so Jesus-like gesture, they recognized him. Then, fresh with insight and new energy, they return immediately to Jerusalem to share with their struggling community:
There are eucharistic lessons in this for all our assembling communities, lessons about gathering and welcoming and the sharing of our lives "on the road."
The story itself is a carefully crafted interplay (1) of Word, (2) of action in response to the Word, and (3) of a ritual of bread and wine that summarizes it all: one story with three interwoven components. Our Sunday ritual is crafted along similar lines:
1. An engagement of the Word with our lives.
2. The following action of offering hospitality (prayers of the faithful and the bringing of gifts).
3. The ritualizing of that gracious mentality when we (like Jesus) "take bread (our commitment to inclusive love), thank God for it, break it, and give it."
Just as in the Emmaus story, the Sunday experience stands or falls on the strength with which the Word of God engages our real lives. In the wilderness of their circumstance, these two honest disciples “meet God” in a new way by daring with a stranger an honest and persist conversation. The warmth of their subsequent hospitality, the change of heart in them to sense the stranger's need for lodging, was dependent entirely on their readiness to be vulnerable (open) to the scriptures. Within the hospitality of their scriptural discussion along the road, their hearts became companionable and community was being forged. Their subsequent offer of hospitality and food was but a natural extension to that sharing of the Word. It was the Word that turned them around, the Word that changed them.
It is the same with the Eucharist today: to the extent that we work the Word of God into our hearts in a mutual, honest and respectful sharing of its implications for our lives, to that extent will we become community in Christ. Central and crucial to the meaning of Eucharist – in any community – is that community’s engagement with the Word of God.
Only the Word of God can build Christian community. That crucial turning-around of the human heart, so necessary for true community to happen, can be achieved only by allowing the Word to dissolve the barriers of the mind. Unless I submit my defenses to the assault of God’s Word, then I am not willingly open to repentance, conversion and growth. Without such personal submission, community cannot grow. Conversion of hearts and minds, a conversion that is personal, continuous, and conscious, is proof that the Word is “alive and active” in any community.
We, the Body of Christ, have learned (1) like Mary, to ponder the Scripture in our hearts and (2) like the two disciples of Emmaus, to build community faith by probing together the Word’s application to our lives and times. Remember how they first shared the scriptures with a stranger (Jesus = a lively engagement) and then found themselves prompted to invite him for a meal as evening fell. Like the old covenant at Sinai, with its story of journey, wilderness and of meeting God, so is the new covenant of Jesus presented by Luke. Emmaus describes an Exodus journey – a portrait of yet another Passover – but told now in terms more easily recognizable for communities whose lives are based on the Eucharist of Jesus.
