By Silvia Holgado (Consecrated Woman of Regnum Christi)
April 5th 2024 - Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center
Let's be clear: the village in Luke's Gospel called Emmaus has not been identified with certainty. There are various hypotheses (with the current names of Nicopolis, Al-Qubeibeh, Abu Gosh,...), and this opens us to another dimension, because it allows us to think that Emmaus actually represents all places: the road that leads to Emmaus is the the path of every Christian, it is the path of every human life.
Life sometimes hurts us and we leave disappointed as we move towards our Emmaus, forgetting, as if it was a dream, God's project. We distance ourselves from God. But God does not distance Himself from us. What's more: He comes to meet us and He begins to walk alongside us. On our paths, the resurrected Jesus becomes a traveling companion to rekindle faith and hope in our hearts. We do not always recognize the Lord, but He walks by our side. And little by little, entering into dialogue with Him, we begin to understand more deeply the meaning of events. We stop having “expectations” about God's plan in our lives, and we begin to experience hope. Not our hope, but God's hope in us.
Every Easter Monday, in “all the Emmaus” of the Holy Land, the feast is celebrated with a pilgrimage from Jerusalem and the celebration of Holy Mass. This year I had the opportunity to go there. It was well said in the homily: “We do not believe in a Christ-magician who solves the situation, but in a God who walks into our lives and our difficulties, and explains our life to us in the light of the Scriptures”.
Have a blessed road to Emmaus!