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The Encounter on the Road to Emmaus
Dear Parish Faithful, CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN! Our mind cannot grasp the divine mysteries, how the Source of Life rises after slaying death. Therefore, it is only in our heart that we experience the joy of the Resurrection, and enlightened by it, with a voice of spiritual gladness we sing to You: Jesus, having met Your disciples on the road to Emmaus, meet us on the journey of life. Jesus, You enflamed their hearts with Your words, set also our cold hearts on fire. Jesus, You and Yourself known in the breaking of the bread, grant us to know You in the Divine Eucharist. Jesus, You promised the Holy Spirit to Your disciples, send down to us also this Spirit Comforter from the Father. Risen Jesus, resurrect our souls. (Ikos 2 of The Akathist Hymn to the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ) ___ We chanted this Akathist Hymn to the Resurrection yesterday morning in church. Akathist Hymns are very rhetorical and rather creative in how they employ scriptural passages and images. I found this particular Akathist both uplifting and humbling in that it continually kept the focus of the Lord's Resurrection on our own lives and on our capacity to assimilate the deepest truths of the Resurrection for what we call "Christian living." Can we today have a "road to Emmaus experience?" If we expand the meaning of that initial encounter between the Risen Christ and Cleopas and an unknown disciple on that first paschal morning, to include our own "journey of life" as expressed in the hymn, then this is possible. Perhaps even more significant is the hymn's exhortation that we "set our cold hearts on fire," thus echoing the disciples on that morning who said to each other after Christ disappeared from their presence: "Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Lk. 24:32) The paschal season allows us the opportunity to "think on these things." |
