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| Janet Brooks-Gerloff ART Collection |
“Hearts Burning Within”
by Rev. Paul Berghout (@FatherPB)
Piety
God raised this
Jesus;
of this, we are all
witnesses.
Exalted at the right
hand of God,
he received the
promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father
and poured him forth,
as you see and hear.”
Acts 2:32-33
Conduct yourselves
with reverence during the time of your sojourning,
realizing that you
were ransomed from your futile conduct,
handed on by your
ancestors,
not with perishable
things like silver or gold
but with the precious
blood of Christ
as of a spotless
unblemished lamb. 1
Peter 17C-19
“Were not our hearts
burning within us
while he spoke to us
on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
So they set out at
once and returned to Jerusalem
where they found
gathered together
the eleven and those
with them who were saying,
“The Lord has truly
been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Luke 24:32-34
Study
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| Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio, 1601 |
One Sunday, a parochial
vicar was doing a children’s talk, using a telephone to illustrate the idea of
prayer. “You talk to people on the telephone, but you don’t see them on the
other end of the line, do you?” he began. The children shook their heads in agreement.
“Well, talking to God is like talking on the telephone. He’s on the other end,
but you can’t see him. He’s listening, though.” Just then, a little boy piped
up and asked, “What’s his number?”
The first stage of the
Emmaus story is the broken dream. First, listen to other’s troubles. (Later,
proclaim one’s faith in Jesus Christ).
Prayerfully, we can share all of our dashed hopes with the One who
fulfilled those hopes. Jesus chooses to visit us [as travelers] where
we are, not where we would like to be, which is potentially comforting.
Luke (24:17) described the
travelers as “sad.” He criticizes them,
saying, “How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!” “Slow of
heart” is another way of describing the stupor induced by the world, seduced by
the glamor of evil; it quickly leads to spiritual desolation.
Maybe the travelers were
traumatized. The scholar Serene Jones reminds us that a conspiracy of the
Jewish leaders and the Romans just tortured and executed Jesus, their leader. The travelers replay the scene of the
crucifixion again and again. Thank God Jesus decisively intervenes and
interrupts their frantic speech, and he calls the disciples “foolish.”
This intervention suggests
that God knows that we will tell distorted stories of our traumatic events,
stories that perpetuate further harm, stories that bear in them the marks of
the violence that haunt us. Jesus steps into the playback loop that traps their
imaginations, and he speaks. What does Jesus do when he breaks their pattern of
storytelling? Remarkably, he begins to reconstruct his account of his death and
continued life, and he does so, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he
interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures.”
Jesus reorders the
disciples’ imagination by pulling it into the history of God’s relation with
Israel.[i]
The travelers are
detaching from a particular way of reading their scriptural traditions by the
Magisterium himself. The Emmaus travelers show us that no one is immune from
blinding attachments.
Even though they still
don’t recognize him, the healing starts.
The travelers, in hindsight, explicitly report that their “hearts burned”
within them as Jesus was opening the Scriptures to them. Peter did the same to
his listeners in our First Reading, which is the first recorded sermon of the
Christian church.
The premise of all the
purgation and illumination is that Jesus told them that suffering and glory are
coextensive dimensions in this world: “Was it not necessary that the Christ
should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”
In Christian mysticism,
burning hearts signifies purgative detachment and the beginnings of
illumination and union.
St. John of the Cross
speaks of the fires of purgation that burn away attachment “to things corporeal
and temporal,” which include purging the soul, which illuminates understanding.
They were ready now for Jesus’ complete disclosure in the Eucharist (the
breaking of the bread), which “opens their eyes.”
Action
Jesus is walking right
beside you. You feel it in the words of a spouse, neighbor, son, or daughter,
stranger. Walking on whatever road you are on. Jesus is alive, not dead. Not in
history. Not a souvenir. Jesus himself came up and walked with them: “Jesus
himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from
recognizing him.”
The risen Christ is only
gradually made manifest to us journeying disciples. Physical sight is not
necessary for a heart alive with faith. “Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet believe” (John 20:29).
All that is necessary is
for people like us to open ourselves to the word of God, “Jesus explains the
Scriptures to us and rekindles the warmth of faith and hope in our hearts, and,
in Communion, he gives us strength” (Pope Francis).
The presence of Jesus in
the tabernacle must be a kind of magnetic pole attracting an ever more
significant number of souls enamored of him, ready to wait patiently to hear
his voice and, as it were, to sense the beating of his heart. “O taste and see
that the Lord is good!” [JPII].
Then Jesus vanishes from
their sight, and through this vanishing, He opens our inner vision. We will recognize Him in the consecration of
the bread and wine at Mass. He will
indeed stay with us in the Eucharist. The medium is the message: the Eucharist.
The experience of enlightenment
or illumination energizes mystics to become more actively engaged in the world,
not more withdrawn.
Thus, notice that
travelers immediately went back to their fellow disciples in Jerusalem and
shared their testimony of what had taken place on the way and how he was made
known to them in the breaking of bread; after that, it’s time for the mission.
Amen.
[Note: Fr. Paul will be back in June when his Sunday
homilies will resume.]
[i] Serene Jones Emmaus
Witnessing: and the Disordering of the Theological Imagination, Union Seminary
Quarterly Review, January 1, 2001).
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