Let us imagine for a while to be among the disciples of Emmaus, who leave Jerusalem full of disappointment for the death of Jesus, with deluded hopes and fear in their heart. Let us acknowledge in our depth the sadness, which does not allow us to perceive that life continues.

Let us be with them and talk of all that has happened in Jerusalem, let us speak and discuss together (see Lk 26, 14-15). It seems that we have lost the reference point, because of the lost person. because of an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ who has died on the cross.

The incomprehensible conclusion of His life, of one in whom they hoped, now pushes them to fill the void with the pastime of argumentation. Everything tended to state that whatever they had been hoping in was just an illusion. They try to explain an event of faith, with purely rational categories. Their behaviour proves that it is not enough to stay with the master in order to assume a contemplative sight of life.

The disciples are together covering miles of distance and conversing between them. Take their trustful gaze away from their relation with Jesus Christ, to turn it towards an analysis of facts, only to tell each other their sense of abandonment.

They look so much blocked as not to see nothing and nobody else along their way. They don't even see Jesus who, personally walks with them (see Lk 24,15).

Without minding anything, the disciples go on insistently looking for an explanation of what has happened. They show to be scared because of the abandonment on behalf of Jesus Christ. They manifest their unexpressed anger before the end of a life for which they had spent all their energies, and the sadness for all that has been.

When faith is missing, we recoil on ourselves, baiting, sometimes, the spiral of death at all levels. By putting his own I at the centre, man does not perceive others, not even himself. It is deceitful to believe, in fact, to believe that a person, who worries only about himself and his own things, is still a living being.

"What are all these things that you are discussing as you walk along?" (Lk 24,17). Once again, Jesus listens to the cry and becomes a companion of journey with those who lose heart, giving them hopeful words. It seems that he wants to guide them towards discovering that many possibility and options can be found in life. If nailed to the past or tending only to the future, the person shuts himself up to an intimacy, which excludes both God and brethren. The here and no surprise of life, lived in faith, reveals the on going presence of God in history.

Respecting the rhythms of conversion, Jesus does not upset the natural human journey. He admits the disappointment of the disciples without judging them. He waits for their growing in the awareness of self, of others, of reality, of history as a visible presence of the mystery. If we choose not to remain anchored at whatever subtracts us from the present, we grow in the capacity of looking at life with free eyes, of acting in history according to the designs of God.

Is it possible that along a seven miles journey the disciples have not met anyone? What about the orphan,  the widow and the foreigner?  Away from any type of relation, nailed up only to the earthly experience of Jesus Christ, the disciples don't even perceive the people who pass near them. He, the Risen Lord, takes them to give a meaning to the past, quoting all that was said by the prophets. He helps them to hold their life once again to give it meaning in the light of the Resurrection. Thus they learn to feel and to see life while listening to the Scriptures. They perceive the presence of the Other, they learn to seek an authentic relation with the Other. In fact, they pass from the satisfying expected relation -  we hoped that He would be the one to set Israel free (Lk 24,21) -  to the awareness of Somebody who, today, shares his life with his own   -while he was with them at table, He took the bread and said the blessing; then He broke it and gave it to them (see Lk 24,30) - whom He asks to act in history as He had acted.

While the fragility of projects and expectations, which suggest fear and death, because of the interrupted line of the future, often leads to use or to throw away the present, Jesus Christ continues, even today, to entrust the mission of building bridges of relation to the consecrated persons. He offers himself through the broken bread and asks to be bread for the brothers and sisters who meet to share the bread with them.

The certainty of this task entrusted by Jesus to his own, allows the heart to burn within, .while He speaks through the Scriptures, and to go back to Jerusalem to witness to a love that offers himself to the point of martyrdom.

The disciples of Emmaus, who had left Jerusalem with their heart full of sadness, now go back to the eleven apostles with the hope, as foundation of their joy, to proclaim passionately that the Lord is risen.

How beautiful it would be if the others also believed that the Lord is truly risen! (see Lk 24,34), so that, on meeting us with a heart full of joy, they may be acknowledged as persons to be blessed, as persons we can share our bread!