Wednesday in the Octave of Easter
April 12, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041223.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we enfold ourselves in some of our favorite post-Easter stories. They warm our hearts with their humanness. They help us understand how people just like us processed the astounding news of the Resurrection.

Two of our beloved senior sisters … on the road together with Him…

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In Acts, we find Peter and John, the same ones Mary had summoned to the empty tomb. Now, in place of their tentative searching, ministerial confidence pours out of them. The long-crippled man wants only a coin but Peter yearns to give the treasure he now knows he possesses. 

By faith, Peter’s heart has risen from death with Christ, and he is compelled to share that redemption with the world:

Peter said, “I have neither silver nor gold,
but what I do have I give you: 
in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.”

Acts 3: 6-7

Listen, this is the same guy who, on the way to Jerusalem, begged Jesus not even to mention Calvary. This is the guy who, on Good Friday eve, cowered by the fire and denied he even knew Jesus. 

Look what Easter faith can do
for a doubtful, frightened heart!

ALLELUIA!

In our beautiful Gospel, a miracle dose of this faith was given to two journeying friends. Can’t you see them – perhaps two old men or women. Arm in arm, they trudge along the dusty road, gabbing their weary heads off. As evening falls, they are slowly wrapped in all kinds of inner and outer shadows:

• Has this all really happened?
• Wasn’t He the One we thought he might be?
• Have our dearest hopes all been in vain?

When Jesus joins them, he wants to hear their mumbled questions. By his abiding, honest,and patient Presence, he walks them out of doubtful logic into faith’s freedom:

He asked them, 
“What are you discussing as you walk along?”
They stopped, looking downcast.
One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply,
“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem
who does not know of the things
that have taken place there in these days?”….

And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are!
How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things
and enter into his glory?”
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he interpreted to them what referred to him
in all the Scriptures.

Luke 24: 17-18; 25-27

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Jesus is listening and walking with us too. He wants to give us the same confidence Peter had as we proclaim our faith by the merciful actions of our life. Just like the Emmaus friends, let’s invite him to stay with us as evening falls.

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Poetry: The Servant Girl at Emmaus (A Painting by Velázquez) by Denise Levertov

The Kitchen Maid, Diego Velazquez, National Gallery of Ireland

She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his—the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?

Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he'd laid on the dying and made them well?

Surely that face—?

The man they'd crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumoured now some women had seen this morning, alive?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don't recognise yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching
           the winejug she's to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,

swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.

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Music: I Can See (The Road To Emmaus) Steve Green