Reader, be rational and recognize: ‘if only we would’ …. the world would be much better off.
Newsdesk (29/07/2024 11:09, Gaudium Press) It seems that the world is in spiritual bankruptcy. And if we add to this the current international tensions, the picture that emerges is far from auspicious. But let’s consider a comforting lesson from history.
‘Stay with us’ (Lk 24:29) said the disciples on the road to Emmaus to the Traveller who had explained the Scriptures to them with such patience and benefit for their souls.
As we know, two disenchanted and sad disciples of Christ were on their way to Emmaus, leaving behind a whole drama that they couldn’t understand and preferred to forget. They were leaving behind Jerusalem, the Upper Room, their friends and all the hopes and promises they had believed in. There was an aggravating factor: they were resistant to the signs that challenged their dulled conscience; ‘some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.’ (Luke 24:22-23) and: ‘Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said…’ (Lk 24:24).
Doubt, discouragement, blindness. They refused to believe in the face of reliable data.
But the Risen Lord appeared to them on the road they had been travelling, reversing their course: after a ‘sui generis’ Eucharistic celebration in an inn, the two turncoats – their names were Cleopas and Luke – opened their eyes, recognized Jesus and hurried back to Jerusalem, returning to the flock; ‘Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread’ (Lk 24:35).
The road to Emmaus signifies a road of abandonment which, through the Lord’s intervention, ended up becoming a road of conversion. This is also what happened to Saul on the road to Damascus, albeit with different circumstances and dispositions: a road of wickedness that became a road of salvation for the Apostle and for the Gentiles.
After twenty centuries of these ‘roads’ – Emmaus and Damascus – today, humanity is walking in miserable directions along the roads of life, turning its back on the Church which was the architect of Christendom when, in the words of Leo XIII, ‘the philosophy of the Gospel governed states’. Like a loving mother, the Church dispensed supernatural grace so that Christ’s kingdom could expand, and how many indeed were receptive to God’s gift!
Let’s just reflect on this fact: Long before there were today’s expensive ministries of education, health, defence, justice and others, there were messengers of the Gospel – monks, nuns and chivalrous Christians – who administered justice, defended people during invasions and war, founded hospitals, schools, universities and other spaces of dignity, taming barbarism, extirpating slavery, respecting women and protecting the weakest.
At that time, conscience of duty and the idea of honour were high, life was respected in all its stages, families were united and fruitful and people were brave enough to defend their own rights and those of others, sometimes at the price of their own blood. Religion was professed without concern for human respect and flourished in all areas of existence. There are countless documents attesting to this reality. At the root of these achievements is, of course, the sacrifice of Calvary and its permanent, unbloody renewal.
Like the two on the road to Emmaus, contemporary humanity is progressively abandoning the Christian Faith. Instead of ‘opening its eyes’ and ‘returning to Jerusalem’, it refuses to recognize the kind Pilgrim who invites it to the table of the Word and the Eucharist at the crossroads of its foolish journey.
The reality is that people, because of their nature wounded by sin, cannot, without divine help, fulfil their duty or make amends for their faults. This is what the New Testament proclaims in two equivalent statements. One is: ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’ (Philippians 4:13). And the other: ‘apart from me you can do nothing’ (Jn 15:5). This ‘all’ and this ‘nothing’ are the Word of God!
The misery we suffer by turning away from God’s ways is not an excuse that can justify us, but an incentive to reconsider and reverse our path. In reality, this ‘I can do anything’ presupposes abandoning ourselves to God’s power. More than ‘doing’, it’s about ‘letting go’. And this ‘nothing’ in John’s Gospel leads us to recognise the powerlessness of the creature. So how should we behave in the face of such incapacity?
Saint Maravillas de Jesus, a 20th century Spanish nun, was, like Saint Teresa of Jesus, a mystic, founder and reformer of many Discalced Carmelite communities; she repeated a phrase that was her favourite motto: ‘If you let Him…’. We have to let God do it. We multiply plans, projects, novelties and chimeras that distance us from Him instead of letting Him forge His work in us and in society.
Do not think that returning to an abandoned path is a matter of going back in time to a longed-for past that would be better than today. Rather, it is opening up of new paths for the future that come to us not from the fragile ingenuity of men, but from Divine Providence. More than simply turning towards God, it is about welcoming Him and begging Him: ‘stay with us’.
The Virgin Mother will help us in this endeavour.
Let us go back to the Emmaus of Sacred History. The two disciples were converted by the power of the mystery of the ‘breaking of the bread’. Now, the power of the Sacrament of the Eucharist remains the same and is capable of transforming not just two stray wanderers, but the whole of humanity… more than seven billion inhabitants! If only the world would allow itself to be overcome by the gentle yoke of the Blessed Sacrament… Oh world, ‘if only you would’.
Reader, be rational and recognize: ‘if only we would’, moved by the omnipotence of the breaking of the Eucharistic Bread, the world would be much better off.
Mairiporã, Brazil, July 2024.
By Fr. Rafael Ibarguren, EP – Honorary Councillor of the World Federation of the Eucharistic Works of the Church.
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan