After the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, He met two of His disciples on the road, talking about the events which had just taken place, and that He said to them: ‘What words are these that you are exchanging … and are sad?’ Mark briefly touched upon the incident, saying that the Lord appeared to the two disciples on the road, but he did not mention what the disciples said to the Lord nor what the Lord said to them.
What lesson does that reading bring home to us? A very important one, if we understand. Jesus appeared; He was visible to their eyes, yet He was not recognized. The Master walked with them on the way; in fact, He was the Way on which they were not yet walking; but He found that they had wandered some distance from the Way. For, when He was with them before His Passion, He had foretold all—that He would suffer, that He would die, that He would rise again on the third day—He had predicted all; but His death was as a loss of memory for them. They were so disturbed when they saw Him hanging on the cross that they forgot His teaching, did not look for His Resurrection, and failed to keep His promises in mind.
“We,” they said, “had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” O my dear disciples, you had hoped! So now you no longer hope? Look, Christ is alive! Is hope dead in you? Certainly, certainly, Christ is alive! Christ, being alive, found the hearts of his disciples dead, as he appeared and did not appear to their eyes. He was at one and the same time seen and concealed. I mean, if he wasn't seen, how could they have heard him questioning them and answered his questions? He was walking with them along the road like a companion and was himself the leader. Of course he was seen, but he wasn't recognized. For their eyes were restrained, as we heard, so that they wouldn't recognize him. They weren't restrained so that they wouldn't see him, but they were held so that they wouldn't recognize him.
Ah yes, brothers and sisters, but where did the Lord wish to be recognized? In the breaking of bread. We're all right, nothing to worry about—we break bread, and we recognize the Lord. It was for our sake that he didn't want to be recognized anywhere but there, because we weren't going to see him in the flesh, and yet we were going to eat his flesh. So if you're a believer, any of you, if you're not called a Christian for nothing, if you don't come to church pointlessly, if you listen to the Word of God in fear and hope, you may take comfort in the breaking of bread. The Lord's absence is not an absence. Have faith, and the one you cannot see is with you. Those two, even when the Lord was talking to them, did not have faith, because they didn't believe he had risen. Nor did they have any hope that he could rise again. They had lost faith, lost hope. They were walking along, dead, with Christ alive. They were walking along, dead, with life itself. Life was walking along with them, but in their hearts life had not yet been restored.
Therefore, if you wish to have life, do what they did that you may recognize the Lord. They received Him with gracious courtesy. Because the Lord seemed intent on proceeding further, they constrained Him. And after they had reached the place toward which they were making their way, they said: ‘Now stay with us here, for it is getting toward evening.’ Constrain your Guest, if you wish to recognize the Savior. Hospitality restored what unbelief had taken away. Therefore, the Lord revealed Himself in the breaking of bread. Learn where to seek the Lord; learn where to possess Him; learn where to recognize Him, that is, when you eat His Body. Truly do the faithful discern something in that reading which they understand better than they who do not discern.
Augustine, Liturgical Sermons 235.1–3
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