“What are you discussing as you walk along?” Jesus asks the disciples heading to the village of Emmaus. “Looking downcast,” they related the events of the last few days involving Jesus. Their eyes were prevented from seeing it was Jesus Himself to whom they were speaking.

I have wondered over the years why they were so quick to leave the city. These were disciples after all, who had followed Jesus for sometime. They had even heard that very morning that some women of their group “reported seeing a vision of angels who announced that He was alive.”  Yet they depart the city, downcast.

Why did they give up so quickly?

Jesus was right to rebuke them with these words, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!”

With the benefit of 2000 plus years of hindsight one would think we would be so much wiser today. One would assume with our superior forward thinking modern minds we would be so much better off today with the perspective of lapsed time. We should be loving each other, holding each life in unsurpassed dignity and worth. We should be sharing and caring and peaceable by now.

Have we too, wondered out of town and out of the proximity of Love? Do we look downcast because after 2000 years it isn’t much better. Our brutality and lust for power, wealth and pleasure grows like a darkness sweeping the nation. We think in terms of “me instead of we” as we cut people off while driving, in line and in church parking lots. Untold unnecessary victims of murder by choice through abortion, continue to grow because I trumps we.

What is going on? What is needed to push back the darkness?

Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, “this episode [Emmaus] points out to us two special “places” where we can encounter the Risen One who transforms our life: listening to His Word, in communion with Christ, and in the breaking of the bread; two “places” profoundly united with each other because the Word and the Eucharist are so deeply bound together that we cannot understand one without the other; the Word of God sacramentally takes flesh in the event of the Eucharist.”

Christ is alive. He is risen and can banish the darkness of our lives both individually and communally. He did not abandon us to work it out by ourselves thousands of years later. He left us Himself, in the Word and in the Eucharist. Not a symbol, not a memory, not a feel good bread and grape juice affair NO! In the reading of his Word, in the breaking of His Body. Each and every day, all over the planet, in every Catholic Church. This is where you will find the Church Christ left behind- His Church, His Body Present in every tabernacle around the world. Come and eat, “this is my body” broken and given for you.

Nothing else will do. Come to THE Meal where the “Bread of life comes down from heaven” that we may live forever.

“Faith in him transforms our life, frees it from fear, gives it firm hope, enlivens it with God’s love which gives full meaning to existence.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

And dare I add, banishes the darkness, springs forth everlasting joy and fills us with the strength, graces and virtues we need to persevere until the end.

He is risen Alleluia!