Wednesday in the Octave of Easter

Happy Easter! This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad!

Today’s readings demonstrate the importance of paying attention to the Lord when he communicates with us. In the first reading, Peter and John tell the crippled beggar, “Look at us.” Once the man is paying attention, Peter brings him to faith by healing him in Jesus’ name—the man walks praising the Lord.

In the Gospel story of the road to Emmaus, Jesus challenges the travelers’ “foolishness” and “slowness of heart” in not believing the words of the prophets about the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Clearly, they have not really paid attention to Jesus’ words of prophecy, repeated three times in the months before Good Friday, that he would suffer and die but rise again on the third day.

The message for us is clear: we must be alert to the Lord’s efforts to communicate with us. Often the Lord speaks to us, as to the crippled beggar in Acts, through other human beings. Often God speaks to us, as to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, through scripture and the liturgy. In today’s Gospel, the travelers experience the Lord in his Word and in His Body and Blood. Having done so, they “glorify the Lord with their lives” by hurrying back to Jerusalem with the Good News: the Lord is risen.

After every Mass, we glorify the Lord by acting as he acted, sharing the Good News of salvation with everyone we meet, and serving the needs of others, as Jesus did. We need to be alert to the many times each day we encounter Jesus and don’t realize it.

Prayer:

Let Him Easter in us,
Be a Dayspring to the dimness of us,
Be a crimson-crested East.  (Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ)