Fr Jim Cogley
In the well-known story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus after Jesus death, the importance of there being two of them cannot be over stated. Jerusalem represented all their hopes dreams and expectations but just now hope was hopeless; their dreams had become nightmares and their faces were twisted with grief. They were now going in the opposite direction, away from Jerusalem. As they walked along together, they were telling the story of what had happened to Jesus and trying desperately to make sense of it all. Jesus joins them as the third party and places everything in the context of a bigger story where he shows them that it was necessary that the Christ would suffer in order to enter into his Glory. Remaining too isolated and thinking we can figure something out on our own rarely ever works. We can never be objective to our own subjective reality. It is only in opening up to a significant another that the Spirit of Jesus becomes present as that third party offering us the awareness or wisdom that we need at that time.