Week 6
Day 2

    Listen:

Luke 24

Two disciples pour out their confusion and grief to a sojourner walking with them.

Luke 24

13 And behold, two of them were going that same day to a village which is named Emmaus, away from Jerusalem sixty stadia².
14 And they conversed with one another of all these things which had happened.
15 And it came to pass as they conversed, and were disputing, Jesus Himself, being near, went with them.
16 But their eyes were held so that they did not know Him.
17 And He said to them, What words are these which you exchange with each another, while you walk and are sad?
18 And one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering, said to Him, Art Thou only a sojourner in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which have come to pass there in these days?
19 And He said to them, What things? And they said to Him, The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a Man, a Prophet, powerful in deed and in word before God and all the people;
20 and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him up to the judgment of death, and have crucified Him.
21 But we hoped that it had been He who was to have redeemed Israel; but besides all this, today brings the third day since these things were done.

AC 2915. I am a sojourner and a dweller with you [Gen. 23:4]. That this signifies their first state, that although the Lord was unknown to them, still He could be with them, is evident from… the signification of being a “sojourner with them,” and of being a “dweller with them,” as being unknown and yet with them. …Here a new church is treated of, and …its first state… is such that first of all the Lord is unknown to them; and yet because they live in the good of charity, and in what is just and equitable as to civil life, and in what is honorable and becoming as to moral life, they are such that the Lord can be with them. For the Lord’s presence with man is in good, and therefore in what is just and equitable, and further in what is honorable and becoming (what is honorable being the complex of all the moral virtues; and what is becoming being simply its form). For these are goods which follow in order, and are the planes in man on which conscience is founded by the Lord, and consequently intelligence and wisdom.…The Lord’s presence is predicated according to the good, that is, according to the quality of the good; the quality of the good is according to the state of innocence, of love, and of charity, in which the truths of faith have been implanted or can be implanted.

AC 2916. Give me a possession of a sepulcher with you. That this signifies that they can be regenerated, is evident from the signification of a “sepulcher,” which in the internal sense of the Word signifies life or heaven, and in the opposite sense death or hell. That it signifies life or heaven is because the angels, who are in the internal sense of the Word, have no idea of a sepulcher because they have none of death; and therefore instead of a sepulcher they perceive nothing else than continuation of life, and thus resurrection—for man rises again as to his spirit, and is buried as to his body…. And because “burial” signifies resurrection, it also signifies regeneration, for regeneration is man’s first resurrection, as he then dies in respect to the former man, and rises again as to the new. By regeneration a man from being dead becomes alive; hence comes the signification of a “sepulcher” in the internal sense.…

AC 2917. I will bury my dead from before me. That this signifies that thus He would come forth and rise again from the night in which they were, is evident from the signification of “burying,” as being to rise again (see just above, n. 2916); and from the signification of “dead,” as being the state of shade or of night, that is, of ignorance… out of which the Lord comes forth and rises with man, when He is acknowledged. Before this He is in night, because He does not appear; He rises again with everyone who is being regenerated.

² The length of a Greek stadium is about one eighth of a mile.

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