Similar to the two disciples walking to Emmaus, there are many of us who frequently walk astray on the roads of discouragement and desillusion. We are many who got used the verb “to hope” in past tense: “we were hoping that…” It means that we don’t hope anymore, that we are frustrated, nothing is important anymore.

This road is used by those who, in other time, were pretty much full of hope and were hoping our dreams would come true… We hoped that the economical development would bring a more just and happy world, that technology would made us more human, that political systems would give us all we need, that the Vatical Council II would renew the Church making it more humble and fraternal…

But many of these hopes have died…

That’s why, we walk the roads of our life with our spirit on the floor… and what is even worse, spreading this lack of enthusiasm all around us…

Nevertheless, the Risen Lord approaches us discretly and starts walking with us, in the same direction, although it’s a wrong direction…

And he asks us a question: “What were you talking about?” We are talking and complaining about everything that is happening… overwhelming us… all that hits us hard and what we don’t understand… We are talking about our crisis, our tiredness, our doubts, our fears, our anxieties… We are talking about all that happens and makes us feel paralized and cold. Yes, there is a lot to talk about… The truth is that we have a lot of information, that we are very updated of numerous news that for us are all bad news precisely because we don’t understand their deep meaning.

And it is precisely this Jesus on the roads that seems to have no information at all… he knows nothing, he is not updated… but He is the one who can explain it all to us, the true meaning of what is happening around us. But for this, we need to allow him to talk… and we need to know how to listen. If we were able to do so, we would start feeling our understanding illuminating and our heart burning. And is we still invited him to sit with us on the table to keep chatting and take some meal together… then the veil would fall from our eyes and we would get to know the true identity of this mysterious companion who comes accompanying our journey.

And the most important thing: we would feel the impulse to go running back to encounter our brethren. But this time not to spread our desillusions but to communicate them our enthusiasm and our joy of living.

Author: Manuel Velázquez Martín.