EASTER SENSATION

Luke 24:32
“Were not our hearts burning (within us) while He spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?”
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By means of touch and the sharing of a meal, the risen Jesus establishes direct contact with His disciples. He invites them in this way to recognize that He is not a ghost and above all to verify that the risen body in which He appears to them is the same body that had been tortured and crucified, for it still bears the traces of his Passion. As He shows Himself to His disciples, their hearts grow fonder and really feel His love. His glorious appearance signifies that He did not only risen from the dead, but also possesses the new properties of a glorious body: not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when He wills. For this reason too the risen Jesus enjoys the sovereign freedom of appearing as He wishes: in the guise of a gardener or in other forms familiar to his disciples, precisely to awaken their faith.

Christ's Resurrection was not a return to earthly life, as was the case with the raisings from the dead that He had performed before Easter: Jairus' daughter, the young man of Naim, Lazarus. These actions were miraculous events. However, the persons miraculously raised by Jesus returned to ordinary earthly life and at some particular moment they would die again. Christ's Resurrection is essentially different. In His risen body, He passes from the state of death to another life beyond time and space. At Jesus' Resurrection, His body is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit: He shares the divine life in His glorious state, so that St. Paul can say that Christ is "the man of heaven".

Our hearts yearn for and burns in His presence. Let us acknowledge the life-giving power and evangelizing dynamic of encountering Jesus today - just as the two disciples felt their hearts burn within them and returned in haste to Jerusalem to tell their story of meeting Jesus.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, we praise You for the love that You have revealed through your Sacred Heart, which was pierced for us and which has become the fountain of our joy, the source of our eternal life. May all we say and do give glory and praise to you and to the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God living and reigning for ever and ever.

Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.