Calvert House

Calvert House’s Emmaus program is a development of the long-standing Wednesday Night Adoration that seeks to help students grow in relationship with Jesus Christ and with one another. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus came to two disciples who were already in relationship with one another, revealed himself to them both in the Scriptures and in the “breaking of the bread,” and set them on fire with love for him. That fire then drove them to share that experience with others, strengthening their faith in the risen Lord. Taking this event as a model, Emmaus will invite students to spend an hour with Jesus in Adoration that they might encounter him in the Blessed Sacrament, connect with one another afterwards over refreshments, and then be set ablaze to invite others to meet the same Jesus that they have met. We hope this event will be a pillar of Calvert’s evangelization efforts, because it is an event in which any student (regardless of denomination or religious affiliation) can participate fully. Through steady encounter with Jesus and Christian community, Emmaus will set students’ hearts on fire just as the disciples’ hearts were on the road to Emmaus.

Now that very day two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him… beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven… Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. - Luke 24:13-16, 27-33, 35.