LEFT ALONE

Were you been left alone?

I once was left alone at home. My mother and siblings were in the school. My father had to attend an important matter in which he could not bring me with him. He knew I would insist joining him should I knew he would leave. So after taking our lunch, he asked me to sleep. Being my daily routine as a kid, I did not have any suspicion that such was a ploy. It was a trick so that he can leave without me noticing it. At midafternoon, I woke-up from my afternoon nap. I was surprised that my father had disappeared. I could not see him in the house. I was left alone. I started to cry and shout, calling my father and mother but to no avail. I was perplexed and confused. I could not understand why I was left alone. I stopped shouting, and in little sob accepted that I was alone that moment. I sat by the gate of our house, waiting, until my father arrived. He comforted me and promised that he will never leave me again. Since then, I know, I am not alone anymore.    

In the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, there are two parts of the days involve; day and evening. Day is often associated with light, certainty, clarity, goodness. Evening is frequently connected with darkness, obscurity, evil. During the day, the two disciples had a conversation with the Lord. They were enlighten by the Lord’s explanation of the scriptures, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself (Lk 24:25). When the evening drew near, they asked the Lord to stay with them, to enlighten them further, to be with them in their uncertainties in life. And so he stayed with them. At the breaking of the bread, at the moment when the two disciples recognized the Lord, the Lord disappeared. But did Christ really disappeared? Did Christ left the disciples in that precarious evening? 

It is painful to be left alone. The Lord knows the feeling of being left alone. He was left alone by his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, in the road to Calvary, and in the cross. He experienced the pain of being left alone when friends suddenly disappear especially in trying moments of life. And anyone who had experience such pain would not wish his/her love ones to experience the same pain he experienced. Christ loves us so much. He does not want us to feel the same pain He experienced due to desolation and disappearance of important persons in one’s life.

THERE IS NO DISAPPEARING ACT. In the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the Lord never left the disciples in that evening of uncertainties and doubts. He did not disappear. In the breaking of the bread the Lord stayed with them, and remain with them. He simply took another form – the Holy Eucharist; Jesus Christ in the appearance of bread and wine offered, broken and shared by the two disciples in that evening.

THERE IS ONLY THE ‘REMAINING’ ACT. The Lord never left His disciples, who asked Him to stay with them in that evening of doubts and  fears, that he may be able to accompany them in those dark moments. The Lord did not have a disappearing act. He remains with us, until the end of time.

Stay with us, Lord, in the evening of uncertainties and doubts until the dawn of certainty and truth breaks forth. Amen.