We continue to walk in this Easter season, allowing ourselves to be accompanied by the Risen One who makes himself present in our daily lives, on our paths, in our searches… also in our doubts and confusion…. Last Sunday we contemplated his consoling greeting: “Peace be with you”, a gift that transforms the heart and sends us to be witnesses.
This Sunday’s Gospel gives us the story of the disciples of Emmaus (Lk. 24:13-35). Two discouraged wayfarers, their hearts wounded by sadness, immersed in useless discussion, discover-without recognizing it at first-that Jesus himself is walking with them. And at the end, as they break bread, their eyes are opened and they exclaim: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way?”
Also today, the Risen One comes close to our lives, walks at our pace, listens to us as we are and rekindles hope.
Pope Leo XIV’s Easter message in his blessing Urbi et Orbi offers us a profound key to understanding this presence: "The strength with which Christ rose is not violent. It is similar to that of a human heart which, wounded by an offense, rejects the instinct of revenge and, full of goodness, prays for the one who has offended it."
This is the power of Easter: a power that does not impose, but transforms from within; a power that chooses kindness, forgiveness and peace.
From the General Government of the Daughters of Jesus we are asked a question that directly challenges us: "What kind of presence am I offering to the world?"
A presence that ignites the heart
In the midst of a world marked by tensions, conflicts and wounds – where violence so often seems to have the last word or to be the “best” solution – the Risen One invites us to be a different presence.
As in Emmaus, we are called to accompany, to listen, to support, to help tell the truth… to be a presence that helps to encounter the One who makes the hearts of others burn, that restores hope, that opens paths of reconciliation.
Being peacemakers is not something abstract. It is a concrete decision that begins in small things: in our words, in our attitudes, in the way we look at and treat others.
Today, more than ever, the world needs witnesses to a peace born of a heart transformed by love.
Prayer
Risen Jesus, thank you that you enlighten our hearts.
Fill them with your goodness so that we may be peacemakers.
May your peace come to us.
