The life of St Cleopas
Only when he broke bread with them at table did they recognize him as the risen Lord, and he vanished from their sight.
Church tradition holds that the unnamed companion in that account was the Evangelist Luke himself, which would make the Gospel's telling of it a firsthand memory. Cleopas is counted among the Seventy sent out by the Lord to preach, and later tradition identifies him as a relative of Joseph the Betrothed, though little about the rest of his life can be said with real certainty. Some sources hold that he was later killed by those hostile to the Christian preaching, in the same house at Emmaus where he had once known the Lord in the breaking of the bread. The Church keeps his memory chiefly for that Emmaus road, when grief turned to recognition and to joy.
