Easter Wednesday

Readings: Acts 3:1-10; Psalm 105; Luke 24:13-35

The beginning of the first reading, from Acts 3, brings to mind the story of the man blind from birth, recorded in John 9. The man healed by Peter and John is crippled also from birth and because of his habit of hanging around in the Temple, begging at the Beautiful Gate, he is also well known to the people.

There are a couple of striking differences though. Here there is no problem with the people recognising him when they see him walking and jumping. In John 9 people are not sure whether it is the blind man or not when they see him after he has been cured. The healed cripple went into the Temple with Peter and John, implying, it seems, that he has immediately become a disciple. There is no drawn out process of recognition on his side as there was in the case of the man born blind. It is as if everything is taking place in a simpler, clearer light: Peter and John look intently at him, people see him when he is healed, and he sees what he must do.

One of the themes of the well-known gospel passage read today, Jesus with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, is seeing and being seen, more specifically recognising and being recognised. We are told that at first something prevented Cleopas and his companion from recognising Jesus, although clearly He recognised them. They also fail to see how what happened to Jesus had long been foretold in the scriptures, even from Moses.

So Jesus' work with them is to open their hearts to understand the scriptures and then to open their eyes to recognise him, which they did when He took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. In today's Office of Readings Jesus is described as 'the beginning of brightness': the light of the new creation already shining, the light in which understanding and recognition become simpler, more straightforward, more direct.

The experience of grace has its roots in the Hebrew language in the simple experience of being looked at and being seen. When we hear of a person finding favour in the sight of someone else - Noah in the sight of God, for example, or Esther in the sight of the king - it is what grace means: to be seen, to be noticed, to be looked at intently, to be taken account of, to be recognised, as the disciples are by Jesus and He is, eventually, by them.

To be recognised means we exist for another person. 'Is it yourself', people ask in Ireland. It means not just to be seen physically but to be known. It also means to be valued and appreciated: we talk of people receiving the recognition they deserve, for who they are or for what they've done. To be recognised is to be held in the esteem and love of another. The mother or father gives a sense of identity and worth to their child simply by looking intently at him or her. And the child already does the same by looking back, recognising 'mama' or 'dada' and even sometimes - and what a glorious thing it is! - with a smile as well.

So the first disciples - and we with them - are being born again into a new world, a new creation, a new way of living. A different Sun is shining in this world, the One risen out of the darkness of death. He sheds a light in which, in the first place, He knows His own, and then, sooner or later, His own know Him. For the great joy of Easter is not that people came to recognise the Risen Jesus but that Jesus came to recognise them, to hold them in His gaze, to look at them and love them, to establish them in a dignity, identity and worth not imagined before.

Jesus says 'Mary', and she is. And 'Peter', and so he is. And (presumably) 'Cleopas' and he is too, recognised all along by the One he and his companion only came to recognise in the moment of his departure, in the breaking of the bread. And Jesus speaks my name too as He looks at me and summons me into His kingdom. 'Rise and walk', he says.