GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 11 April 2012
Dear friends, today too the Risen One enters our homes and our hearts … Only he, the Living One, can give meaning to existence and enable those who are weary and sad, downhearted and drained of hope, to continue on their journey. This was the experience of the two disciples who were on their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus on Easter Day. They were talking about Jesus but their sad looks, expressed their disappointed hopes, uncertainty and melancholy. They had left their homeland to follow Jesus with his friends and had discovered a new reality in which forgiveness and love were no longer only words but had a tangible effect on life. Jesus of Nazareth had made all things new, he had transformed their life. But now he was dead and it all seemed to be over.
Suddenly, however, they are no longer two, but three people, who are walking. Jesus joins the two disciples and walks with them, but they are unable to recognize him. They have of course heard the rumours about his resurrection, indeed they even tell him: “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”. Yet all this did not suffice to convince them, because “him they did not see”. So Jesus, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets”, patiently “interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself”. The Risen One explains Sacred Scripture to the disciples, giving the fundamental key to reading it, namely, he himself and his Paschal Mystery: it is to him that the Scriptures bear witness… Jesus had opened their minds to the understanding of the Scriptures.
