I kept thinking about an Italian Eucharistic chapel during National Marriage Week last week.
My wife and I visited the Domus Familiae near Bovolone, Italy, last summer. Flanking the altar, stone panels depict a married couple walking with Jesus and then dramatically recognizing him in the breaking of the bread at their Emmaus home. It’s at the heart of the headquarters of Don Renzo Bonetti’s Great Mystery Project, and it is an unapologetic vote for one take on an age-old question from the Gospel of Luke:
“Who was the other disciple who walked with Jesus to Emmaus?”
Luke tells the story of two discouraged disciples leaving Jerusalem who are joined by Jesus. They don’t recognize him, since he had just been killed three days earlier in Jerusalem.
Traditionally, the two disciples walking to Emmaus are considered to be men.
However, some leading Catholic interpreters of Scripture say that the two disciples are married.
Father Mike Schmitz on Day 321 of his Bible in a Year Podcast calls the two “Mr. and Mrs. Clopas.” He is likely following the lead of Tim Gray and Jeff Cavins in their remarkable book Walking With God: A Journey Through the Bible.
They point out that Luke tells us one of the disciples’ names, and it is Cleopas — an unusual name, which is spelled “Clopas” in its Jewish pronunciation. John’s Gospel happens to mention that that the wife of Clopas was at the cross that weekend, comforting Mary.
“Since Clopas/Cleopas was a rare name, and Cleopas is a disciple of Jesus, it is hard to imagine that there is a wife of Cleopas who also is in Jerusalem for the Passover.” And it seems likely that if one left Jerusalem, the other would have gone too.
If they are a married couple, they are a fitting completion of the story of salvation that began in the Garden of Eden.
One thing I have been discovering in my Extraordinary Story podcast is that Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection is part of God’s grand plan to return his beloved creatures, mankind, to our original state of innocence and friendship with him.
Gray and Cavins spell out the ways the Emmaus story fulfills the earlier story:
“When the first couple in Genesis ate the first meal (from the forbidden fruit), ‘then the eyes of both were opened’ (Gn 3:7); as Jesus breaks open the bread at table with the couples from Emmaus ‘their eyes were opened’ (Luke 24:31). The eyes of the original couple are opened to shame and guilt whereas the new couple that Jesus walks with to Emmaus have their eyes opened to the resurrected Lord in the Eucharist.”
Thus, Eden was lost in a meal when a husband and wife tried to be like God on their terms — and it is regained in a meal by a husband and wife becoming like God on his terms, when they “recognize him in the breaking of the bread” and he disappears.
Not only do they fulfill God’s story in all his Scripture — they also fulfill Luke’s story in his Gospel.
Leading Anglican theologian N.T. Wright calls the Emmaus story a “masterpiece within the masterpiece” of Luke’s Gospel and he also thinks of the disciples as a married couple.
“Consider how Luke has used this story to balance the story he told way back at the beginning of his gospel about another husband and wife, Mary and Joseph, and Jesus,” he says. In both stories, the couple is leaving Jerusalem. In both stories, they rush back to Jerusalem.
But whereas Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the Temple — this new couple find him in the new way Jesus intends to be with us. Pope Benedict XVI describes what that new way is: the Eucharist.
Last, if they are a couple, these disciples give us a beautiful vision of “home.”
I like one last writer’s take on this story — the late Deacon Tom Bello, who baptized two of my children at St. James Church in Falls Church, Virginia.
“To me it makes perfect sense that Mary and Cleopas would be returning to their home in Emmaus, ‘conversing about all the things that had occurred’ as would any husband and wife,” he wrote, and when they invite him to stay, says Bello, “It sounds like an invitation to stay at one’s home.”
We know Jesus dined with Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus; perhaps Luke is having another family meal here. If he is, every married couple should pray to Jesus just as they did:
“They urged him, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.’ So he went in to stay with them.”
He is waiting for an invitation to abide in our marriages, too.
