Over the summer, several of my Dominican brothers and I learned to sing Joseph Rheinberger’s Abendlied, one of the most haunting works of music I have ever heard. The German words of the motet are those of the disciples who meet the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus:
Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden, und der Tag hat sich geneiget.
(Trans.) “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent” (Lk 24:29).
In this Easter Sunday encounter (Lk 24:13–35), Jesus appears to two disciples leaving Jerusalem. They do not recognize him, and they look “sad” (v. 17) after his seeming defeat on the Cross. As they walk, Jesus interprets the Hebrew scriptures for them, explaining how “Moses and all the prophets” (v. 27) anticipated the suffering of the Messiah. When they arrive at Emmaus, Jesus appears to be leaving the disciples behind (v. 28). This is the context for the plea of Abendlied.
“Stay with us!” Bleib bei uns! Jesus, whom the disciples still do not recognize, has made their hearts burn (v. 32), and they cannot bear for him to leave. We feel this longing in Abendlied when the first half of the motet soars upward in a repeated ascending line, and when we hear chord after chord give way to dissonance and suspense as the song goes on.
Later, the higher voices repeat the disciples’ plea with urgency: O bleib bei uns. “Oh stay with us. Oh stay with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is now far spent.” As we listen achingly to these words, we too pray: we need you, Jesus. We are weary, and we cannot endure long without you. We burn for your peace.
According to Saint Gregory the Great, the patron saint of singers, such a piercing desire for God shocks us out of our complacency. This yearning simplifies us, frees us of false hopes, and points us to our true peace in God. It widens or “dilates” our hearts to receive him and keeps us from settling for less (Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, Ch. 2).
“Oh stay with us.” Jesus accepts the disciples’ invitation, and goes in to spend the evening with them. The Gospel goes on: “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight” (v. 30–31).
This is no ordinary meal. Compare Jesus’ actions in Emmaus to those at the Last Supper (see Mt 26:26–28). The verbs are the same. The action is the same. We see that Jesus’ reply to the disciples’ “Stay with us” is “This is my body.” His answer to our own longing, his “staying-with-us,” is the Eucharist.
O bleib bei uns. As we settle into our fall routine, let us keep the “evening song” of Emmaus alive in our hearts. May that song stir us from our sadness and complacency. May it reawaken our longing for our heavenly home. May it lead us back to the Eucharist, where Jesus has come down to stay.
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Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
