Wednesday in the Octave of Easter

He Walks With Us

The two disciples in today’s Gospel are walking away—away from Jerusalem, away from everything that has just happened, away from where they were supposed to be. That’s the key detail. They shouldn’t have been on that road. Jesus had told them He would rise. The women had already gone to the tomb and brought back the news. The apostles were still there. Jerusalem was where they were meant to stay. But instead, they leave. They go back to what is familiar, what makes sense, what feels easier than waiting and trusting.

If we’re honest, we’ve all walked that road. The road away from trust, the road away from hope, the road where we quietly say, “I thought God was going to act… but maybe I was wrong.”

And what does Jesus do? He goes after them. He meets them on the wrong road—not when they’ve figured it out, not when they’ve come back, but right there in their confusion. At first, they don’t recognize Him. Because the Resurrection is real, but it takes time to see it. It takes time for our eyes to adjust to what God has done.

So Jesus walks with them. He listens. He explains the Scriptures. And then He breaks the bread. And suddenly their eyes are opened. Only afterward do they say, “Were not our hearts burning within us…?” Even before they recognized Him, He was already working in them.

This Easter, we’re hearing reports of record numbers of people entering into the Catholic Church—people searching, people saying yes, people being drawn to Christ. That’s not an accident. That is the Risen Lord walking with people on the road, meeting them where they are, opening their eyes just as He did in the Gospel.

But that raises an important question for us. What does this mean for us? Because they’re not just entering the Church in general. They’re going to walk into places like this. They’re going to sit in these pews and look around, and they will learn what it means to be Catholic by watching us—how we pray, how we receive Communion, how we speak to one another, how we welcome or don’t. Whether our faith is alive or simply routine.

They’ve come off that road, and they are looking for something real.

In the Gospel, once the disciples recognize Him, they don’t stay on that road. They get up immediately and go back to Jerusalem, back to where they were meant to be, back to the Church. And they can’t keep it to themselves.

So maybe the question for us today is simple: Am I on the right road? Or have I drifted back to what is comfortable, to what requires less faith?

Because Christ is still walking with us. He is still speaking, still opening the Scriptures, still breaking the bread. And now more than ever, He is bringing others to Himself. And He is asking us to be ready—not just to welcome them, but to show them what it looks like to walk with Him and to stay.