Third Sunday of Easter. Today’s readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35
In Recollection of a Journey (1952), published as Journey with Strangers in the US, Ray Coryton Hutchinson, tells the story of the aristocratic Kolbeck family, who in 1940, under the Russian occupation of Poland, were inhumanely taken together with hundreds of thousands to forced labour in Siberia. The novel opens with the words: “Here is it my darling. You asked me to put together an account of those uneasy days, and I have done it as well as I can.”
Recollection of a Journey, by Ray Coryton Hutchinson (1952), published as Journey with Strangers in the US.
Journey with Strangers, by Ray Coryton Hutchinson.
It’s a well-known fact, as research studies have repeatedly shown, that there is a healing power in telling our stories, especially if these concern traumatic events in our lives. Storytelling is an important feature in Luke’s gospel, whose opening verses resonate with those of Hutchinson’s novel.
The Emmaus narrative, chosen for this Sunday, is in itself the storytelling of people who at first believe they are journeying with a stranger. There’s some ‘ironic tension’ in the narrative of Cleophas and his anonymous companion telling their story to the anonymous stranger, who in turn retells their narrative which, in truth, is first and foremost his own story! Finally the narration of the same events from different perspectives and experiences start making sense as part of a larger scenario. With eyes wide open, Cleophas and his companion return to the apostolic group in Jerusalem to recount their story, enlightening the traumatic events of the brutal passion and death of Jesus. There, they also become receptors of a retelling of the same story by the apostles and their companions.
In telling our stories we connect, we stop being isolated, we become empowered, we emerge from anonymity, oppression, manipulation and oblivion. There, values are transmitted. In sharing their experience of events through storytelling, anonymous strangers become companions, namely “those who share of the same bread”. Their eyes are opened in mutual recognition and new life is birthed.
Theories on the identity of Cleophas’ companion, kept in anonymity by Luke, abound. Some even suggest it might be Mary, Cleophas’ wife, who on Good Friday stood beneath the cross with the mother of Jesus and the beloved disciple. Luke perhaps chose not to disclose the name and gender to help the reader identify with the unnamed disciple and become part of the narrative. Whatever the reason, Luke gives voice to the first-hand account of someone whose memory would have been erased from history were it not for the power of storytelling.
Similarly, in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter addresses the crowd by retelling the Christ event, sharing his story through the use of other prophetic narratives from Scriptures. The powerful “with the help of wicked men, put Jesus to death by nailing him to the cross”, in a bid to banish him to oblivion together with the many who were executed and their body left to rot and whose remains were thrown to the beasts or dumped.
Storytelling can be harbinger of life and therefore of the future. Indeed, there’s great power in telling stories and to keep them in writing for future memory. Populist politicians, tyrants and dictators, conspiracy theorists, and adherents to historical negationism know this. Hence, throughout history, people in power resolve to ridicule, humiliate and silence courageous peripheral voices who in conscience persist to witness to truth and justice through their narratives for the sake of building a better future. Narratives preserve memory and do justice to past and present generations whose very existence and memory are threatened and silenced through damnatio memoriae mechanisms.
Throughout history, people in power resolve to ridicule, humiliate and silence courageous peripheral voices who in conscience persist to witness to truth and justice through their narratives for the sake of building a better future
As heirs of the Judeo-Christian heritage of remembrance and memorial, we should never tire to utilise the power of narratives to hand on values. In a post-truth society, where conspiracy theories, denialism and distortions of history abound, this becomes a charge entrusted by Jesus Christ, God’s story amongst us, to us disciples, his story in human history.