Jesus (61 page)

But when he asked, “What things?” I was surprised to find myself sharing the pain that I was facing in my ministry and how focused I had been on my worries. I could feel some of Cleopas's anger when he responded to Jesus. He may have even vented some anger: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place?” In other words, “How could you not
know
this, God? Where have you been?”

“I had hoped,” I told Jesus sadly, “that this ministry would be more life-giving.”

In my prayer, Jesus sat down by the roadside. As he placed his hands on his knees, his sleeves slipped back, and I suddenly saw the wounds from the Crucifixion. As he drew back his hood, I saw that he was still wearing a crown of thorns. The man walking beside us still carried the signs of his suffering. I felt an urge to remove the thorns, but realized that this would hurt him. So I simply sat with him.

Then I noticed his hands, dry and dust-covered. His thin wrists stuck out of the frayed cuffs of his tunic. “Why is it like this?” I asked him. His look seemed to answer me: trying to do good often leads to suffering—in my case, a little bit of suffering, in Jesus's case far more.

Later on, Jesus joined us for dinner. The inn was crowded; Cleopas and I were seated in front of a fireplace, surrounded by other diners, who seemed not to notice us.
¹³
When Jesus broke the bread, I imagined him vanishing before our eyes. And I was conscious of my desire for him to stay behind. My eye was drawn to the bread, the Eucharist, which remained. But I was also conscious of a desire to look for God even amid the sadnesses of life. With a start, I realized that I had not been doing as much as I could: I had not been seeking him actively. My problems in ministry had been so distracting that I failed to look for Jesus elsewhere.

It was a somber prayer. Typically, when praying with this favorite passage, I am reminded of places in which I have overlooked the presence of God—in friendships, in my family, in my community, in nature, in prayer, in the world around me—and I am filled with a sense of gratitude. Thus, it is usually a passage that leads to happiness. This time, however, I was reminded not only that suffering is part of everyone's life, but also that I hadn't been seeking God as attentively as I could have been. I wasn't paying attention.

Experiences in prayer aren't always joyful. Often they can point out an area that needs some attention. On that particular retreat, it seemed that Jesus was asking me to turn my gaze to other parts of my life.

But I also had to ask myself: Why don't we find God more in the midst of our daily life?

S
OMETIMES WE DON
'
T FIND
God because we are miserable. Life is often filled with suffering. We should not minimize the desolation of the two disciples, who seem on the brink of walking away (they are literally walking away from Jerusalem) from all that they have experienced with Jesus. Yet God has not given up on them. God appears to them, in the midst of their desolation, and helps to reconcile them to what has happened.

If we are patient, sometimes we are afforded a glimpse of a new way of looking at suffering; over time we can find meaning in its midst. But we must work hard at it. One of the Greek words used in this story provides a clue about how to do this. Cleopas and his friend are described by Luke as “talking and discussing.” The Greek word for discussing is
syzetein
, which can also mean “inquiring” or “examining.” Luke Timothy Johnson says, “We are to picture the two disciples trying to figure out the meaning of the events.”
¹⁴
All of us are invited to inquire and examine during times of suffering, though our eyes may be kept from seeing God, if only for a time.

So perhaps I'm being too hard on Cleopas and his companion. Perhaps in their “talking with each other about all these things that had happened,” they tried to make sense of things, even as they dealt with the evaporation of their hope. Though they feel distant from God, they are still struggling to be in relationship with God. Maybe we need to be more generous with them—and with all who struggle or question or doubt in the Gospels.

The disciples' eyes are fully open to seeing Jesus only after they offer him hospitality. “Stay with us,” they say. Remember, they still believe that they are offering hospitality to a stranger. Freed from their focus on self, the two begin to listen to the stranger, to turn outward, and then invite him to dine with them. The attentive reader sees that Cleopas and his friend, even in their grief, imitate Jesus through hospitality and table fellowship. Notice also that Jesus waits to be invited; just as God often awaits an invitation to accompany us.

Cleopas and his friend move from their own sadness to a willingness to care for someone else. And in doing so they recognize God.
¹⁵

A
NOTHER REASON WE OVERLOOK
God's presence is that we don't bother to look. Finding God is often a matter of paying attention, but sometimes we're spiritually lazy.

In the Jesuit novitiate, we were taught a simple daily prayer called the examination of conscience, also known as the examen. Popularized by St. Ignatius Loyola, it consists of five steps. First, you recall things for which you're grateful and give thanks for them; second, you review the day, looking for signs of God's presence; third, you call to mind things for which you are sorry; fourth, you ask for forgiveness from God (or decide to reconcile with the person you have harmed or seek forgiveness in the sacrament of reconciliation); fifth, you ask for the grace to see God in the following day.

In this prayer we are invited to work against natural laziness. Noticing takes work. If you think about your relationship with God in terms of a close friendship, it is an invitation to pay attention to your friend when he or she is talking to you about an important matter. Noticing also helps you find God in times of difficulty, when you might be tempted to focus only on the painful parts of life. Either way, it is an invitation to do what Cleopas and his companion finally realized that they had to do: pay attention.

These need not be dramatic events. On the road to Emmaus Christ does not appear in a burst of flame or dazzled in sunlight. He is simply another person on the path.

A few years ago, my two nephews came to visit me with their parents—my sister and brother-in-law. My sister had taken them to a museum in New York City, and before we met their father for dinner, they stopped by my Jesuit community.

It's always a joy when toddlers or small children drop by our Jesuit community, because everything seems new to them. “Oooh,” said my five-year-old nephew when I showed him our house chapel. “It's a little tiny church!” Later on, my nephews decided that what they most wanted to do was what they always most want to do: watch TV. We huddled around my television and watched cartoons. Matthew climbed up into the chair next to me, and I was surprised at how much love I felt for him. At that moment I thought of what an amazing gift my nephews were. My sister had tried for years to have children, and finally, and with God's grace, she gave birth to two wonderful boys, and they are one of the best parts of my life.

All at once, watching cartoons, I noticed God. I was happy to notice this sign of God's presence in the most ordinary circumstance. The ability to notice God is what the two disciples undoubtedly learned in the wake of their much more dramatic encounter.

O
N THAT SAME RETREAT
my spiritual director gave me a copy of a painting of the Road to Emmaus that I had never seen, by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. It's an atypical depiction of the familiar scene, in which Velázquez concentrates on a servant girl who stands in the foreground. She is bent over a table, cleaning up after the meal. Behind her in the next room, at table with Cleopas and his friend, is Jesus, just revealed in his true identity.

The young woman notices what is going on behind her. In her hand, she is half holding a ceramic pitcher, as if she were losing her grip. The other items on the tabletop look ready to topple, a metal bowl is slanted; porcelain ones are overturned. Things are not the same, the world has changed, and she knows this, even if the disciples don't.

Because she is paying attention.

G
EORGE AND
I
NEVER
found Emmaus. At least we don't think we did. Perhaps we stood on the exact spot where Jesus met the disciples in Latrun, outside the gates of the Trappist monastery. Or maybe we were exactly where the inn once stood when we stopped in front of that school in Abu Ghosh. Who knows? In the end, we simply continued our trip back to Jerusalem, and we were happy to return to our lodgings at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

Late that afternoon, in the slanting sunlight, I took a long walk through the Old City and got completely lost in the maze of streets and alleys. This time, though, I didn't mind being lost, because I knew that even in our confusion God is with us.

T
HE
R
OAD TO
E
MMAUS

Luke 24:13–35

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, 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. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

C
HAPTER
24

Tiberias

“Do you love me?”

O
NE OF THE FIRST
places that George and I visited in Galilee was the scene of one of the last places mentioned in the Gospels. The morning after checking into the Franciscan hostel, we drove directly to Capernaum, and afterward we drove south for roughly a mile, to the Church of the Primacy of Peter. Here tradition has it that the Risen Christ stood on the shoreline of the Sea of Tiberias (aka the Sea of Galilee), called out to the disciples who were fishing, and prepared a breakfast of fish for them over a charcoal fire.

The modest gray stone chapel, built by the Franciscans in 1933, stands close to the shore. Its interior is dominated by a low, undulating, cream-colored rock, the size of a kitchen table, elevated just a foot off the floor.
Mensa Christi
reads a sign marked with a cross, “The Table of Christ.” Touching the cold stone was unexpectedly moving. Was this the rock on which Jesus prepared his meal? Hard to say, though the stone has been venerated by pilgrims since the early Byzantine period; indeed, incorporated into the current structure are the walls of a structure built in the fourth century.

As with many places in the Holy Land, it was easy to imagine the Risen Christ standing on this spot. Here—or near here—he watched his friends fish as he stood on the sandy beach. It's not hard to think that Jesus was joyful at seeing his friends. And joyful because he was preparing a gift for them.

T
HE STORY BEGINS PROSAICALLY
. Peter is by the Sea of Tiberias with six disciples: Thomas, Nathanael, James and John, and “two others of his disciples.” It is either late in the evening or just before the dawn. Already assuming the role of a leader, Peter says bluntly, “I am going fishing.” The others tell Peter they will join him.

To many New Testament scholars, the story seems to be in the wrong place. Though John describes it as the third appearance of the Risen Christ, it sounds more like an
initial
appearance.
¹
Not only are the seven disciples surprised by Jesus's appearance and not only do they fail to recognize him, but they have returned to their previous occupations. As the New Testament scholar Francis J. Moloney, SDB, asks, how could they “so easily give themselves to this prosaic return to their everyday activity?”
²
Perhaps the post-Easter appearances have disoriented them, and they are confused about what to do next. Maybe they simply needed to earn money. Or perhaps this is, in fact, an earlier appearance, and some of them have not yet seen the Risen Christ.
³