The Gospel of Luke 24:35-48 presents us Jesus’ visits to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus and their mood before and the during the visit. The disciples were in difficult days mixed with fear, disappointment, doubt and anxiety. Then the Risen One, Christ, presents himself among them. How do they react? Shocked, terrified and skeptical. Jesus tells them: “It is really me!” (literally says “I am”, the name of God in Exodus 3:14). This is to say that death did not interrupt his existence but makes his divine condition manifest in fullness.
To his disciples gripped with fear, Jesus says: “Touch me, look at my hands, my feet…” This invitation becomes the surest model for the community of believers to recognize him after his death and Resurrection—to touch and look at the signs of his Passion. That is the hallmark of His presence. It is precisely the link of the Cross with the Resurrection that tells us the specifics of the proclamation of Easter. And to experience the Risen One, we need to touch with our hands and see with our heart. It is not enough for others to tell me their own experiences. I too need to have my personal experience. So many people doubt, perhaps, because they have not gotten involved. Faith is an encounter; otherwise, it remains a hypothesis or a doubt.
Encountering Christ
Luke describes one of the ways to get to meet the Risen One. This is the encounter with His wounds. To make himself believed, Jesus asks to look inside the wounds in His hands and feet. We should also find the courage to do the same thing. Looking into our weaknesses will make us discover the hidden and unpredictable power of Easter. God acts precisely in our weakness. We find it difficult to meet the Risen One in our life because we think that if he were there, we would not be so weak, we would not be wounded. If we looked at the depth of our weaknesses and wounds, we would realize that God is right there, and there he would like to be recognized and welcomed.
Luke’s account is a real invitation to rethink our way of seeking the Lord. He is not to be sought in the great theophanies or in abstract realities or ephemeral sentiments that sometimes characterize our belief. He is to be sought in the concreteness of everyday life, in the breaking of bread, in fraternally sharing the table with the roasted fish. He is also found in experiencing his wounds that continue to bleed in humanity wounded by sin and fragility. In every man plagued by sin and fragility, the entire Paschal mystery relives. In the wounds of suffering humanity, the passion, death and Resurrection of the Lord is present. With the painful and glorious wounds of him, He makes himself recognizable and present in the midst of the community of believers.
Jesus with Human Face
What Luke presents to us today is not an ascetic or dogmatic Christ but a Jesus with a profoundly human face. He reveals his divinity by sharing in the whole mystery of human frailty, with the exception of the sin that he overcomes and cancels by offering his life on the wood of the Cross. Like the disciples, we too must be witnesses of the paschal mystery. We must invite all men to look at and touch Christ, present in their lives, in their wounds, in their stories, often full of contradictions and sufferings. We must remember, however, that the final word on every human life is in the wounded and glorious hands of Jesus who with his Resurrection overcame death and gave us the hope of a new life.
