The disciples return from Emmaus, and immediately they recount how Jesus was made known to them in the “breaking of the bread,” and they had not even finished explaining their experience when Jesus, Himself, appears again in their midst. Only this time they don’t recognize Him, this time, they don’t see Him. In fact, they are afraid of Him, they question who this person is, and are amazed. This same Jesus is now standing before them, face to face, the very same whom they just broke bread with and now they don’t know Him.

A priest once posed these questions, he said: “Have you ever wondered why two people can look at nature and one sees the signature of God in it and starts praising the Maker, and the other sees nothing but a bunch of molecules caught in the cycle of evolution and entropy?” Or, he asks, “Have you ever wondered why two people read the same bible and one meets the living God (receives strength and peace and joy for every-day living) and another sees nothing but a collection of ancient human writings?”

It is the heart of the mystery of our relationship with God. Ours is a life not just founded upon, but in need of faith. Faith allows us to see the unseen, to have our eyes opened when Jesus stands in our midst, to know the mystery of God Himself, while He still remains a mystery. It does not take away our intellect or challenge our minds but, rather, brings them to another level, a supernatural level, so that what is believed can truly be known.

St. John of the Cross, in his great spiritual classic The Dark Night of the Soul puts it beautifully: “Faith, he says, darkens the intellect of all its natural understanding and thereby prepares it for union with the divine wisdom.”

That is why, as it says in our Gospel, Jesus had to open their minds to understand the Scriptures, because we can never truly understand what is said, we can never see them as the Word of God unless we are ready to receive what God wants to give. For, while faith, indeed, is a gift, we need to be wiling to respond to that gift, because our response is just as much necessary as God giving us what He Wills.

To know God then, to truly know Him, is to practice faith and to see Him is to truly believe without seeing. It sounds contradictory, almost juvenile, but it is simplicity in its fullness, it is what Jesus demonstrates to us today.

Showing us that when dealing with God we always need His help, which is why He gave us that channel directly to His heart, our prayer, the way in which we lift both our minds and our own hearts to Him, so that, ultimately, and in the end, our faith is strengthened, our hearts burn, and we know, as definitively as St. Peter in our first reading today that, indeed, our God is: "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers who has glorified his servant Jesus for us. The same whom we daily encounter in the “breaking of the bread,” the Eucharist, the same whom, with eyes of faith, we will see in a few moments.