"Stay with us, Lord!"

The Emmaus Experience

Today's Gospel   is such a wonderful evocative story of dismay and grief transformed. It invites us to enter in; to take up the part of one of the characters; to share the experience of being taught by and recognizing the risen Lord. "And they knew him the breaking of the bread."

The disciples' request, "Stay with us, Lord!" is our request. We want to prolong the joy of Easter. We need God's presence in troubled times. Five years ago, close to the end of his life, Pope John Paul II expressed these very feelings in his Easter message to the world. May it become your prayer.

URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE

OF HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II
Easter Sunday, 27 March 2005

1. Mane nobiscum, Domine!

Stay with us, Lord! (cf. Lk 24:29)

With these words, the disciples on the road to Emmaus

invited the mysterious Wayfarer

to stay with them, as the sun was setting

on that first day of the week

when the incredible had occurred.

According to his promise, Christ had risen;

but they did not yet know this.
Nevertheless, the words spoken by the Wayfarer along the road
made their hearts burn within them.
So they said to him: "Stay with us".
Seated around the supper table,
they recognized him in the "breaking of bread"
- and suddenly he vanished.
There remained in front of them the broken bread,
There echoed in their hearts the gentle sound of his words.


2. Dear brothers and sisters,
the Word and the Bread of the Eucharist,
the mystery and the gift of Easter,
remain down the centuries as a constant memorial
of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ!
On this Easter Day,
together with all Christians throughout the world,
we too repeat those words:
Jesus, crucified and risen, stay with us!
Stay with us, faithful friend and sure support
for humanity on its journey through history!
Living Word of the Father,
give hope and trust to all who are searching
for the true meaning of their lives.
Bread of eternal life, nourish those who hunger
for truth, freedom, justice and peace.


3. Stay with us, Living Word of the Father,
and teach us words and deeds of peace:
peace for our world consecrated by your blood
and drenched in the blood of so many innocent victims:
peace for the countries of the Middle East and Africa,
where so much blood continues to be shed;
peace for all of humanity,
still threatened by fratricidal wars.
Stay with us, Bread of eternal life,
broken and distributed to those at table:
give also to us the strength to show generous solidarity
towards the multitudes who are even today
suffering and dying from poverty and hunger,
decimated by fatal epidemics
or devastated by immense natural disasters.
By the power of your Resurrection,
may they too become sharers in new life.


4. We, the men and women of the third millennium,
we too need you, Risen Lord!
Stay with us now, and until the end of time.
Grant that the material progress of peoples
may never obscure the spiritual values
which are the soul of their civilization.
Sustain us, we pray, on our journey.
In you do we believe, in you do we hope,
for you alone have the words of eternal life (cf. Jn 6:68).


Mane nobiscum, Domine! Alleluia!