Dear friends in Christ

We hear the beautifully touching story of the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus in the Gospel of this weekend. They encounter Jesus along the way, converse with Him, but still do not recognise Him. It is only in the gesture of Jesus breaking bread before their eyes, that they finally see it is Jesus Himself. We might speculate as to why it was they didn’t recognise Him: obviously they believed he was dead and so He would have been the last person they expected to encounter; He was alive in His glorified body which was another reason—as with the other disciples and holy women—that made Him difficult to be known in the flesh. Too often we are the same: we do not recognise Jesus when He appears before us in an unexpected guise. It might be a person in need of our help or charity; a situation that presents itself to us and we do not see the hand of God there; some challenge in which God is asking us to totally trust in Him. Sometimes, only with hindsight do we recognise that it was the presence of Jesus all along.

Easter reminds us that it is the season, above all of the others, in which we are invited to live faith, trust and holy optimism in our lives. If we do not live by these virtues, life will seem like a jungle, a complete tangle of realities that we cannot make sense of. With faith, with trust in God, and with optimism in all things, we can live as children of God: facing the realities of life, the problems and the knocks, in complete trust that we are in the loving embrace of our Father God. As on the feast of Divine Mercy last Sunday, we repeat: Jesus I trust in You!

God bless you!

Msgr Kevin Hale