The ruins of a twelfth-century church now mark the village of Emmaus, toward which two disciples were walking when Jesus appeared to them after the Resurrection (Luke 24:13-28). Walking the road with Jesus has become a powerful symbol of Christian life, and Emmaus is an excellent place to ponder it.
The massive stones of the church, just off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, are a dramatic backdrop for prayer and reading the story, which continues with Jesus breaking bread with the disciples.
There is more than one "Emmaus" because of differing distances from Jerusalem given in various versions of Luke, but early Christian scholars believed it was here, overlooking the Valley of Ayalon (Josh. 10:12). The town, where archaeologists have unearthed interesting Roman and Byzantine remains, first became known for a great victory of the Jews over the Greeks in 165 BCE.