Each of the four gospels contains a story about Jesus appearing to His disciples after the Sunday morning when they had found the sepulcher empty. For example, see Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:14-19; Luke 24:13-33; John 20:19-31, and John 21.

In Luke, there’s a story of two disciples walking from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, a walk of about seven miles. Shortly after they leave the city they are approached by another traveler who has noticed their troubled faces and serious talk and asks them what is troubling them. Walking along together, they ask the stranger, “Haven’t you heard of the troubles in Jerusalem, how the prophet from Galilee, who we hoped would be the one to save Israel, was given up to be crucified? And strange to say, when some of the women went on the third day to anoint His body, they saw angels who told them that he was not there but was risen from the dead.”

On hearing this, the traveler chides them for not believing, and says “Don’t you see that Christ had to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?” The stranger then tells the two disciples many things concerning Jesus, from the books of Moses, and the prophets, in the Old Testament. The two disciples listen with awe, but do not recognize the stranger. At length they arrive at Emmaus. The stranger appears to want to go on when the two stop, but they beg him to stop also, because it’s getting late in the day, and they want to hear more. So they all sit down to share the evening meal, and when the stranger takes up the loaf of bread and breaks it and gives them pieces, their eyes are opened and they recognize Him, and He vanishes.

One can imagine the stunned awe that came over them both as they realized that this was Jesus. They knew He was crucified, and yet He had walked and talked to them for several hours. The women were right! The angels were right! He was alive!

The New Church believes that there are internal meanings to all the stories in the Word of the Lord, the sacred scriptures, and that this internal meaning, within the literal stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joshua, Samuel, David, and the rest, and all the sayings of the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi, and the four gospels… this meaning is what makes the Word holy.

So what can we see here in this story? Well, that internal meaning in “Moses and the prophets” is the story of Jesus’ life in the world, from His birth in Bethlehem through all His growing years until His “death” and then His rising. Because Jesus knew that, and had certainly read the Scriptures and understood them internally, He knew for a long time how His earthly life was going to close, and that it was necessary for it to close as had been “written”, in order to save the human race. So He told the two disciples that story as they walked toward Emmaus.

More about that walk... In the Word, any mention of walking is really referring to how we live our lives from day to day. In many stories of the Word, it is said that someone walked with God. It is said that we should walk in His ways and that we should walk the straight and narrow path.

Also in this story we are told that this was a journey of sixty stadia (in the original Greek). Sixty (or other multiples of "six") represents the lifelong work of rejecting the temptations that come from our inborn selfishness. Apocalypse Explained 648. So, this journey to Emmaus means our life’s journey - as a person that is trying to follow the Lord’s teachings and become an angel.

The destination was Emmaus. In the Word any city represents a doctrine, an organized set of truths that we have put in order so that we can live according to them -- our rules of life. See Arcana Coelestia 402. They are not necessarily good, as with Jerusalem or Bethlehem, but can also be evil doctrines, e.g. Sodom or Babylon. My dictionary tells me that the name Emmaus means “hot springs”. Another universal meaning in the Word is that water means truth in its beneficial uses, but can also mean truth twisted into falsity by those in hell, in an opposite sense. See, for example, Arcana Coelestia 790. Think of the wells that Abraham dug, or the waters that Jesus promised to the woman of Samaria as they talked by Jacob’s well, or the pure river of water flowing out from under the throne in the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation. In its converse sense, where water is destructive, think of the flood that destroyed all but Noah and his family, or the Red Sea that had to be parted so that the children of Israel could cross. The springs represented by Emmaus were holy truths bubbling up from the Word for us to use. And these are hot springs, and heat means love. So that's our destination, where truth and love together are flowing out for us to use, in a continual stream from the Lord.

This plain little anecdote about the disciples meeting the Lord on the road to Emmaus isn't just a story about Jesus's resurrection with a spiritual body. It is also a story of how we should be living our lives. We can be traveling toward heaven, listening to the Lord, walking in the way with him, and at the end He will break bread and have supper with us.

7852. 'Roasted with fire' means good that is the product of love. This is clear from the meaning of 'what is roasted with fire' as the good of love; for 'fire' means love, 934, 4906, 5215, 6314, 6832, 6834, 6849, 7324, and 'what is roasted' that which has been infused with love, consequently good. In the Word what has been roasted is distinguished from what has been boiled. 'What has been roasted' means good, because it has been cooked by means of fire, while 'what has been boiled' is used to mean truth, because it has been cooked by means of water. A similar distinction is made here, for it says in verse 9, Do not eat any of it raw, nor boiled at all in water, but roasted indeed with fire. The reason for this is that 'the Passover lamb' means the good of innocence, which is the good of love to the Lord.

[2] All this shows what 'the roasted fish', in Luke 24:42-43, means in the spiritual sense, and also 'the fish placed over the fire of coals' when the Lord appeared to the disciples, described in John as follows,

After the disciples got down onto the land they saw a fire of coals that had been set, and a small fish lying over it, and bread. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the small fish. John 21:9, 13.

'A fish' means truth in the natural, 991, while 'a fire of coals' means good. Thus 'a small fish lying over it' means the truth of spiritual good within the natural. A person who does not believe in the existence of the internal sense within the Word inevitably thinks that the presence of the fish over the coal fire, when the Lord appeared to the disciples, and its being given them by the Lord to eat lack any deeper, hidden meaning.

[3] Since 'roasted with fire' means good that is the product of celestial and spiritual love, evil that is the product of selfish and worldly love is meant in the contrary sense by 'roasted with fire' in Isaiah,

He burnt part of it with fire, over part of it he ate flesh, he roasted a roast, in order that he might be satiated; also he was made warm. And he said, O brother, ¹ I have been made warm, I have seen the fire. I have burned part of it with fire, and also I have baked bread over its coals, I have roasted flesh and am eating it. Isaiah 44:16, 19.

This refers to worshippers of a carved image. 'A carved image' means falsity of evil, which is portrayed by such an image. 'Roasting a roast' and 'roasting flesh' are working evil under the influence of a filthy love. With regard to 'fire', that it is in the contrary sense the evil of self-love and love of the world, or the desires belonging to those kinds of love, see 1297, 1861, 2446, 5071, 5215, 6314, 6832, 7324, 7575.

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