Were not our hearts on fire?” remarked the two disciples who encountered Jesus on their way to the village of Emmaus (Luke 24:32). Notice, it was their hospitality, their insistence on Jesus staying with them that ushered in their eventual bliss – “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…” ( 24:31). Ultimately, the encounter deepened their faith and renewed their verve to carry on their mission of spreading the kingdom of God with transformed hanker and resolve.
Similarly, each morning we begin our day with the mass; praying that like the disciples our eyes will be opened and our dedication to the magis strengthened, knowing that when our faith is deepened, we will fulfill the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, when he said, “…the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ” (John 14:12). Yes, we hold a firm belief that the rebirth of hope we desire to be is innately linked to the Paschal Mystery we celebrate each morning. Through the sacrifice of the mass and our academic pursuit – “We could, and we should, on all levels and for all (boys and girls; men and women) and beyond (all people) for the whole world which is ours, be a blessing and a revelation of things great, of things so great, so deep that people, we first of all, could realise that we are on the scale of God Himself, that our vocation is not only to be morally good, but to be as great as God” (Metropolitan Anthony). This exhortation is further summarized in the words of the German mystic, Angelus Silesius, when he poignantly said, ‘I am as great as God, God is as small as I.’ Thus, we want to become Eucharist for the world and truly incarnated as co-creators with the God Head Trinity.