I am Cleopas. For a year or more (OK, several years), I’ve been trudging along a road, not intentionally walking away from faith, but finding myself weak in it. Particularly when it comes to belief and experiential knowledge of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, I have found myself running on empty. I’ve wanted to believe, but so many times I received and felt nothing. I wondered if it would always feel like a routine.
Now, I know feelings aren’t everything and faith is the evidence of things not seen, but still! When that Pew study was released last year and revealed that 69 percent of American Catholics believe the Eucharist is just a symbol, I wondered how I would have answered on my hardest and most honest day. I’ve felt like a man without legs, staring across a wide river with no hope of making it to the other side on my own.
Cleopas, too, struggled with faith (cf. Luke 24:13-35). When he heard the reports that the tomb was empty, he found it hard to understand. All the evidence pointed to Jesus’ death and the destruction of His “kingdom.” And in that sadness and discouragement, Cleopas found himself on a road leaving Jerusalem on Easter morning.
The Saturday after Easter this year, a group of us sisters presented Mother Mary Francis’ one-act play, “The Road to Emmaus,” for a recreation night. I chose to play Cleopas. I don’t entirely know why, but I knew I must. We had a couple of rough rehearsals, reading from our scripts and erupting in laughter whenever we messed up our lines. I expected the performance to be about the same caliber.
But something changed when we put on makeshift costumes and stood before our audience. The emptiness and sorrow, nostalgia and loss of Cleopas became mine. I stepped into his sandals and tasted his tears. I felt the weight of Jesus’ death more heavily because I had known Him as a friend. I questioned how life could continue without Him and desired so much to be with Him again. And when a “Stranger” (played by our postulant, Isabelle) approached my companion (Reuben, played by Sr. Rita Clare) and I and explained His death and Resurrection, I was taken aback. When He said, “You have not believed the Christ,” I was grieved at my lack of faith.
This regret and desire came to such a pitch that when Isabelle tore the wheat bun and gave pieces to Sr. Rita Clare and to me, just as had happened to Cleopas, “my eyes were opened.”
Remember that wide river? I suddenly found myself on the opposite bank.
I stared at the broken bread in my hands and knew. You could have told me I held the actual Eucharist, and I would not have been surprised--so real was this truth to me. I knew that every other time I held the Broken Bread in my hands or received It on my tongue, there was Jesus, alive!
It’s like He swam from the opposite shore, built a bridge, and carried me, the man without legs, across the river. He masterfully orchestrated that moment in the middle of the stage to take me completely by surprise. The grace was precisely in the fact that I was caught unawares. Only because I was trying to be Cleopas and enter into the experience of Cleopas could He chance to find an open door to Sr. Mary Gemma’s reality and meet her there.
And it is not an accident that He chooses this time, when public Masses are suspended, to reveal the truth of His Presence to me. The fact that we are able to have private Mass is such a privilege that I hold even more dearly now. Every day, as I hold His Body in my hands, I feel even more that this is a precious gift.
His goodness and His foresight overwhelm me. I’m not even sorry to have gone through all those dry Masses, except that I could have loved Him more and sooner. Now I am Cleopas, running back to Jerusalem to tell everyone how I know Him in the breaking of the bread.
Every day I hold You,
Every day You come,
Forgetting all your glory,
Remembering Your love.
These hands, so small and broken,
Your host, so pure and white--
Earth and heaven joining,
Dark becoming light.
Why could I not believe You,
The times You came before?
I cannot see You better,
I cannot hear You more!
Now you’re just as hidden,
Appearing still so plain.
But now I know and love You--
I recognize Your face.
It must have been that moment;
I felt that all was new.
My tears, they blurred my vision;
My heart, it all but knew.
So quietly and softly,
So mercifully, You came
And filled my lonely doubting
With richest gift of faith.
Sr. Mary Gemma Harris, T.O.R.
