Wednesday April 19
Two men with heavy hearts, full of regrets and foreboding, going in the wrong direction…. Jesus walks beside them and talks with them but they are unable to recognize him. This story is an image of the life of the Church.
“Why are you looking for him among the dead?” said the angels to the women at his tomb. Seek him among the living! It was the same instruction at the Ascension, “People of Galilee, why are you standing here looking into the sky?” (Acts 1:11). Your life is unfolding in the present, not in the past; among the living, not among the dead; on the ground, not in the sky. Not in the tomb, not in the sky, but here on the ground; not in the past, not in future, but in the present.
About five years later, Paul, the persecutor of Christians, was to have his strange experience. On the road to Damascus he was thrown to the ground and he heard a voice, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:4,5). Jesus, then, is still beside his followers. He is only dimly recognized and by few. “You were with me,” wrote St. Augustine some centuries later, “but I was not with you” (Confessions, X, 27). But we are able to recognize him in the breaking of bread.
What we have in today’s reading is an example of how Christians should read the Scriptures. The Lord is with them unawares. He teases out their fears and doubts and disillusionment.... He calls their attention to what they had overlook or misunderstood. Finally they “recognize him in the breaking of bread.” This is a phrase that Luke repeats (verses 31 and 35), as if to make sure we notice it. Disciples in every century have continued to recognize him in “the breaking of bread.”
