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Do You Recognize God?
7 min
Gospel
Lk 24:13-35
That very day two of them were going to a village named Emma′us, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cle′opas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since this happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see.” And he said to them, “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He appeared to be going further, but they constrained him, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Readings are taken from Dynamic Catholic’s Bible: RSV Catholic Edition.
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Transcript
Do You Recognize God?
It's a long reading, but is there a word or a phrase or an idea, a theme that jumps out at you today? There are some great ones here in this reading. One is God's presence. We've been talking recently about the book practicing the presence of God and Brother Lawrence and Pope Leo said to a journalist, "If you want to understand me, read practicing the presence of God." And this idea, a simple spirituality, of just being constantly mindful of God's presence in our lives, and how easily we lose sight of God's presence in our lives. We become distracted, we busy ourselves with things that are not important, and we overwhelm ourselves, which makes it very difficult for us to recognize God's movements in our hearts, God's movements in our lives, in other people, in situations and circumstances. And so I think one of the themes here is that Jesus draws near to them, which is a beautiful line, right? Jesus drew near to them. And they didn't recognize him. And I think very often in our own lives, we don't recognize Jesus when He draws near. We don't recognize God when He is at work in our lives. At least not in the present moment. We don't have that present-moment awareness. Very often, we have awareness in hindsight, in retrospect. We're able to look back and say, oh, yeah, that thing that happened last Thanksgiving, that makes sense now because of this and this, and I see that God was at work in my life then. But we also realize very often in those situations that if we had been more aware, if we had been more mindful of God's presence and his workings in our lives, that we probably would have been aware of that at the moment, in the time. And so that present moment awareness is one of the great spiritual intelligences.
We would talk about, obviously, academic intelligence. We talk about emotional intelligence. We almost never talk about spiritual intelligence. And being mindful of God's presence in our lives, being aware of that is a great spiritual intelligence, a great gift from God that we should ask him for more and more. Lord, reveal yourself to me. Allow me to see you moving. And then the other phrase that jumped out at me was the classic phrase, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road?" We consume a lot of content in our culture, and I don't think much of the content makes us feel that way. I don't think much of the content makes our hearts burn. But that's the content we should be consuming. That's the content we should be looking for. And so let's think about the content we're consuming and think about how it's affecting us, how it's affecting our lives, our relationships, our future, and start to consume better content, content that allows our hearts to burn within us as we consume it. Have a great day and remember, be bold, Be Catholic.
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