God Loves the Broken-Hearted
Luke, on the road to Emmaus
Sometimes I feel like I’m walking alongside the disciples on the road to Emmaus before they know Jesus is there. I imagine them as travelers on a journey, seeking their way in a very dark time. For them, Jesus had just been crucified. Like them I despair over death, injustice, or acts of cruelty that can confuse and demoralize me. And like the Emmaus travelers, I often can’t sense the glimmer of hope that may be walking with me.
Just as Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize Jesus in the garden, the Emmaus-bound disciples didn’t recognize the risen Jesus who was traveling with them. Both travelers are full of despair as they walk the miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus. I, too, can become preoccupied with death and despair and miss the Light walking right beside me.
It's in the darkest times that I sense resurrection—God comes to the broken-hearted.
That Light has been with me in hospital rooms, while witnessing a car wreck, when learning of a young person who had been arrested. It doesn’t erase the death, wreck or arrest, but the Resurrection offers us to a new way to be with the pain. What was dead is now alive. We are invited to be fully alive, changed, because Christ lives.
Even though the travelers couldn’t recognize Christ, their souls were nevertheless open to what he was saying. Jesus comes to those who doubt, despair, or are exhausted. It doesn’t matter if you know scripture well or not. It doesn’t matter if you know the supposed “rules.”
Jesus comes to those who have had enough, given up, and are quickly heading away from the trouble. God loves the broken-hearted.
Jesus comes to the whole hurting human family. Later in the day, Jesus and the travelers will reach Jerusalem, and break bread together. Only then will the travelers recognize the Christ.
I pray I never stop looking for Jesus, the one walking beside us all. Jesus is there, in our worst times, our good times, in the breaking of the bread and the longing for it. We may not see the manifested person of Christ, but we see him in the elements, reflected back to us by those walking towards the Eucharist with us each Mass. We see him in those serving us. We see him when we leave church and go into the world. And then of course, we see Christ as we encounter those who are hungry, searching, sad, or lonely. There, God is not a stranger, but our neighbor. May we learn how to better reflect the great Light, even when we are broken-hearted.