The 2007 film “Peaceful Warrior” has a scene of enlightenment where the two main characters, Dan Millman and his mentor/guide, Soc (Socrates), arrive at the mountaintop.
Soc had been wanting Dan to see the place. Although initially filled with anticipation, Dan is soon underwhelmed.
Later, Dan pauses and receives an epiphany of sorts. “The journey,” he says quietly, “the journey will bring us happiness, not the destination.”
This is the image of today’s Gospel, the Third Sunday of Easter: The Two Disciples on the Road to Emmaus. The road is symbolic of our life journey, our mission-journey. We are all pilgrims in life.
The journey brings us happiness if it brings meaning. While the destination may not be known or clear to us at the start, there is a dream, a vision of life that beckons and makes us leave “home” and be on the road.
People leave home as they hear the call to mission and take the mission-journey.
This is an age-old pattern across cultures and ages—from the time of Ulysses, Jesus Christ, Siddharta Gautama, Don Quixote, Bilbo and Frodo, and here, the two disciples.
Total breakdown
The two disciples, Cleopas and company, are on their way back home to Emmaus. The crisis happens when all that they had hope for (“We were hoping he would be the one who would redeem Israel”) ends on the Cross.
It is a total breakdown.
They had turned their backs on the mission-journey they had earlier responded to, and the choice was to go back to Emmaus.
Cleopas and company journey with a stranger who helps them understand the story of the Christ they had followed earlier—recounted everything about this Christ, “reinterpreted everything that was written about him in Scripture.”
The road to Emmaus ends. They are back home. But then something happens in the journey that make them invite the stranger, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.”
Ah, they listen again! There is the voice within that calls them, always calls and never stops calling once we hear and listen to it, or even if we don’t.
We allow the Risen Christ to enter the journey. No, we recognize his presence—he who never leaves us even in times of crisis and doubt, when he is with us “in disguise.”
Enlightenment
This moment of enlightenment comes to Cleopas and company at the breaking of bread, recognizing that this stranger is the Risen Lord.
This moment of enlightenment comes when they recognize that their “hearts were burning while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us.”
After this moment of epiphany, the two go back on the road, back to Jerusalem to proclaim their experience of the Risen Lord.
This is the moment of the Resurrection, when we feel our hearts burn within us—when, in times of crisis, we allow God to be God or “let go and let God.”
True story
In another epiphany scene from the “Peaceful Warrior,” Dan tells Soc, “There are no ordinary moments. There’s never nothing going on.” Soc looks at him and says, “Welcome back!”
Often we give up at a certain stage of the journey. We even change the course of the journey, like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They turn their backs on Jerusalem and go back to Emmaus.
But on their journey back home, the Risen Lord makes his presence felt amid crisis, loss of hope and despair. He makes their hearts burn again. They rediscover their true and first love—the love that made them leave home to follow Christ.
The two disciples on the road to Emmaus is a true story. Dan Millman’s is a true story. Our mission-journey is a true story.
It is the story of our journey that will lead us to true happiness, to joy that only the Risen Lord can give—from meaning that comes from discovering once more what we truly love, our first and true love. It is with this love alone that we see, love and follow Christ, the Risen Lord.