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The task of religion is not to turn us into ‘proper’ believers; it is to deepen the personal within us, to embrace the power of life, to expand our consciousness, in order that we might see things that eyes do not normally see.   ~Bishop John Shelby Spong

In my last reflection, I wrote about an angel made from a glittery ribbon that watches protectively from the living room mirror in my mother’s home. For years I looked at it and thought it was nothing more than an elaborate, glittery bow, until one day I noticed that it was in fact shaped like an angel.  I showed a friend a picture of the angel and her response was, “How could you possibly not have known that was an angel?  I ask the same question of myself because in hindsight, it seems very obvious to me that I was looking at an angel. The important part here is that the angel had not changed, but something in me had changed. What could have transformed me in this way?  I do not know the answer, but I can tell you I began to see differently back in 2017 as we cared for my dying father. One palliative care nurse wore a pin of angel wings, another visitor arrived wearing a snow white fluffy jacket that literally made her look like an angel, another nurse whom I had never met brought our family supper one night. At this sacred time leading up to and including the death of my father, I began to see angels everywhere I looked…and not the kind of angels we see in movies with white robes, glowing faces and choral music. What I saw made me feel as though the scales had fallen from my eyes and I could see that there has always been angel stuff going on all around me. In a way it reminded me of those Magic Eye pictures from the 1990s that presented an optical illusion.  At first the image would appear to be nothing more than a colourful design or pattern but upon closer inspection you noticed it contained a hidden shape(s), which seemed to appear out of the blue right before your eyes.

The Emmaus story we hear today from Luke’s Gospel is another reminder to me that just because a thing is invisible to us does not mean it is not there. My most consistent prayer as an adult has been for greater clarity and focus in order that I may see truth more clearly. In my mind at least, if I am able to conquer some of the personal and cultural biases that cloud my vision, I am one step closer to the transformation Jesus wants for each of us. Similar to the disciples walking to Emmaus, I am in my own way one step closer to recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

In his work, With Burning Heart (1994), Fr. Henri Nouwen muses about what transformation could have occurred in the disciples to go from not recognizing Jesus to recognizing Jesus:

“It is so easy to narrow Jesus down to our Jesus, to our experience of His love, to our way of knowing Him. But Jesus left us so as to send His Spirit, and His Spirit blows where it wants…There are many ways in which Jesus appears and many ways in which He lets us know that He is alive.”

From this I have learned a couple of lessons I consider important.  First, at all times God is at work both within me and within others whether or not I am able to recognize this.  Second, there is evidence of the divine embracing me at all times, if I have the eyes to see.

Trevor Droesbeck
Office for Evangelization and Catechesis