Accompanying persons experiencing bereavement : Jesus journeying with the disciples of Emmaus in Lk 24:13-35

Abstract

Death is a reality which touches every family, shattering the world of persons left behind. Hope, seeming to be lost, visits the bereaved in new ways; Holy Scripture, the Word of God, shares salvation history as the place where God visits and helps his people to gradually grow in their hope and faith that there is life beyond death. The hope of an afterlife continues to strengthen the OT people’s sense of community between themselves and the ‘community’ between the dead. The culmination of salvation history, Jesus’ death and resurrection, has wrought for every person the grace of eternal life and by itself transforms one’s suffering. Jesus himself through different signs and ways, visits a number of people, pointing towards hope and life which the resurrection of Christ brings. The journey with the disciples of Emmaus is a story which offers the reader a journey which God undertakes in the person of the Risen Christ himself, a journey with two people in bereavement. The Church who accompanies the bereaved through her pastoral caregivers is the Risen Christ himself who is with men/women in their suffering; listening to their cries and sorrows, translating the Word of hope, and present at “the breaking of the bread” which is given to men and women at the table of the Eucharist, having the unique mark of the resurrection. Support groups within the parish help in having people trained to deal first and foremost with their respective losses and then to journey with others as a “wounded healer”.