Lenten Reflection
by Fr. Dominic Borg, OCD
at the day of Reflection on April 1st, 2006

(This talk has been transcribed "ad verbatum" with Fr. Dominic's permission ... as you read, you will hear him talking to you-listen carefully.)

The quote that was chosen for this Day of Recollection is - "Open my eyes so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law."

If we were to go through the Bible quickly and try to find just a few references where we encounter the opening of the eyes, the closing of the eyes, the importance of the eyes, and how to use the eyes, you would be amazed at what you would find.

Perhaps very few of you know this quote in the Bible, but after today you will leave, with the thought: "Even if I did not understand all that he was talking about, I took this quote home with me."

The prophet Zechariah in chapter two verse eight says, "For thus says the Lord of hosts [after his glory sent me] regarding the nations that plunder you: Truly, one who touches you touches the apple of my eye." He is saying that the enemy who dares to harm you is touching the apple of His eye. In Deuteronomy chapter thirty-two, verse ten we find "He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste, he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye." He guarded Israel as the apple of His eye. God is telling us we are "the apple of his eye".

In Zechariah He says "truly one who touches you touches the apple of my eye. Now I am going to raise my hand against them and they shall become plunder for their own slaves." This is the way the Lord defends each one of us. The first time we encounter the notion - their eyes were open - is after Adam and Eve sinned. They did not listen to the Word of God. God told them that there were these two trees, there were plenty of trees in the garden of Eden, yet he spoke of the two trees. We are taking it symbolically, but the message remains the same. There was the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were prohibited from eating, not from the tree of life, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, it is not they (as we unfortunately are doing now-a-days) who decide what is good and bad. They are not gods. They do not set the rules. It is God, Who says what is good for you and what is bad for you. They thought that they would become like God, that they would decide what is good and what is evil. Unfortunately we too have arrived at the stage where we think that we are gods and we put aside the Word of God. We put aside the teaching of the Church. We put aside the natural law saying that from now on this is what the court has decided, this is what the law has decided, and we are going to decide what is good and what is bad or evil. By not listening to the Word of God their eyes were opened, which is strange, because usually our eyes are opened by listening to the Word of God.

Here we can understand a few sayings of St. Augustin. St. Augustin said, "God made everything out of nothing" that is beautiful. But, what is even more beautiful, is the phrase "He makes saints out of sinners". He uses our sin to continue to show us our reality and the reality around us. So sometimes the Word of God comes and opens our eyes, and sometimes the Word of God tells us to close our eyes. This is not only with the Word of God. We see it also in the materialistic wisdom, so to speak. They say that before you get married you should look at your spouse with two eyes, and after you get married close one eye. Before marriage you open your eyes to all his or her defects. Am I going to take this or not? But, once you enter into it, you had better close one eye at least, to continue to survive. The Word of God also tells us to close our eyes to the defects of our brothers and sisters. "Why do you see the speck in the eye of your brother and tell him or her 'Come let us remove this speck from your eye.' You hypocrite, it would have been better if you first took the log out of your own eye and then you would be able to see better to take away the speck from the eye of your brother."

In the Old Testament too, we find for example Joshua. He prays that God will shut the eyes of the people, then he prays that God will open their eyes. We also find the prayer of Solomon in the sanctuary, when he was going to dedicate the sanctuary. "Let Your eyes be open to this place and Your ears be open to the prayers that people come to say, their prayers to You."

So we find that there are human beings who are called to open their eyes and to close their eyes. There is also God Who is called to open His eyes and also sometimes to close His eyes, like 'close your eyes, close your face from our sins', because if You are going to judge us according to our sins no one will survive, 'but only with mercy look as us'.

When we open the Bible the first time we encounter this notion of eyes being opened in the story of Adam and Eve. They had sinned. When their eyes were opened, they discovered that they were naked, and they began to hide their nakedness. When God saw that they were trying to hide their nakedness, to try to make improvement in their life, God came to their rescue by clothing them with garments of leather which are able to take the water and the heat of the sun too. The same it is with you and with me. When God sees that we are with our eyes open to our defects and want to close our eyes to the defects of our brothers and sister, not to judge them, then God will come to our rescue and He will give us this mitigation.

In the first few chapters of the Bible, we have this cycle of sin, speech, mitigation, punishment. There is the sin of Adam and Eve. They did not listen to the Word of God. We are Adam and Eve.

Then there is the speech. God enters into a dialogue with Adam, "What have you done?" "It is not me. It is my wife." And God said to Eve, "What have you done?" "It is not me it is the serpent." And God talks with the serpent too. There is always denial. It is our nature not to accept responsibility, not to understand the words of Napoleon - 'None did me harm except myself.' 'NONE DID ME HARM EXCEPT MYSELF.'

You can allow people to argue only if you give them permission. If you do not give them permission, it will slip away like water rolling off the back of a duck. Let go and let God. You will notice that between go and God there is a difference of only one letter, the letter "d". Add the letter "d" to go and it becomes God. If you misplace that - "d", your anger becomes danger. If you take the - "d" and place it in front of anger and it becomes danger. When the Word of God tells us not to be angry and you get angry, do not allow the sun to come down upon your anger but seek reconciliation. It is then that we learn how to let go and allow God to come into our life.

After Adam and Eve sinned, their eyes were opened, and they discovered their nakedness. Nakedness is a sign of being divested of your dignity, divested from God's presence because you want to become God. Then they discovered their weakness. This is something in the spiritual life that we have to be on guard for. We are so concerned to eliminate weakness. What we do not realize is that weakness and sin are two different things. Weakness is the battlefield where God manifests His power. "Do not be afraid Paul for my power is made perfect in weakness." Many times we do not accept our weakness. We do not accept our own responsibility, and like Adam and Eve we too begin to blame other people.

What is also interesting here is that the last time in the Bible where we find this notion of opening our eyes is in the book of Revelation Chapter 1 verse 7. It says, "Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail." If we believe, like the centurion in the Gospel - The centurion beheld Jesus Christ on the cross. His conclusion was that indeed this must be the Son of God. He opened his eyes. Why is it so important that you and I ask God for this prayer that we find in the front cover of today's program - "Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things out of your law."

As I was saying, there are quite a good number of instances in the Bible where we are called to pray to open our eyes. We open our eyes and find ourselves in God's presence. But sometimes our eyes are closed. "Their eyes were closed and they were kept from recognizing Him." The disciples of Emmaus - they are walking because faith is a journey, it is a pilgrimage. We see it with our Lady. As soon as Mary received the Word of God she began a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage towards Elizabeth. "Let it be done to me according to Your Word. And Mary went with haste to be of service to Elizabeth." Abraham, received the Word of God and began a journey.

People enter into the communities full of enthusiasm especially if they are converts. They want to make leap jumps, huge jumps, long jumps. But the way towards the freedom, the way towards the peace that God wants to give us is the way through the wilderness. It is there, as we have read in Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 10, where it says explicitly "He found him in the land of the wilderness, of waste and he shielded him. He took care of him as the apple of his eye." Each one of us is the apple of the eye of God. God is going to shield us. The way He shields us is with His Word. When we listen to His Word we find ourselves being shielded by the fire that is engulfed around us.

In the book of Daniel we find three young men, who did not want to accept the word of the king. They wanted to hold on to the Word of God. They found themselves in the fire, in the furnace. Scripture says that "God sent a breeze around them and the heat did not touch them." Not only, but it said "not even the smell of smoke was on their clothes." If you have a husband or wife who smokes at home, you argue with them to go and smoke in the garage or outside. When you meet people, they will ask you if you have just smoked. 'Me, smoking? No I don't smoke.' There is the smell of smoke on you. 'Oh, my husband smokes, the smell, is on the clothes.'

The Word of God protects us. Obedience to the Word of God performs miracles. It brings you face to face with this God of the impossible. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. We are like these disciples of Emmaus walking, talking. One of the disciples was Cleopas - the other - you can put your name there. You put your name! That is why the Bible does not tell us the name of both of them, only one. When you read the Word of God you are not reading it for your brother or for the community, you are reading it for yourself, and that is why there is a space for you. That man, the prophet Nathan told him - that man is you. It is useless that you are in the Church, hearing a sermon and try to apply it to your sister. 'It is for Mary in our community. It is a pity that she is not here. Our community would be better if only she could hear it, but unfortunately she is not here.' No this Word is not for your sister, this Word is for you. So one of them was Cleopas, the other is you. They are walking this journey of faith, a journey in this moment of crises. It is a moment of crises. The word crises in English comes from Greek. Crises in Greek means judgement. I make a judgement, and I take a step forward thinking that I am going to advance. All of a sudden I discover that I have regressed rather than advanced. I enter the community to get better and after a few months, you say - 'It was not a moment that I entered. I am regressing rather than progressing. You know that there are all these clashes in the community. I did not know that they hate each other. I did not know that they don't know anything. I am the only one who knows anything. I didn't know!' And good job that you did not know, because if you knew you would not have joined them. If you knew you would have rebelled to God's call. Like Jeremiah you would have told Him - 'Oh, I am young, they are far advanced in spirituality. I am young send someone else.' That is what God does to you and to me. Sometimes He opens our eyes and sometimes He closes our eyes. "Their eyes were closed, kept from recognizing Him." Why? So that they would empty themselves. All the grumbling and judgement has to go out. If you are serious about filling with new wine, you had better empty what you have in your stomach.

When you go to confession you empty it. I have seen it many times. When you have been hearing confessions for many, many hours a week as we used to do in Malta. Now even in Malta they are not going much to confession but they are still going, you look at the man or the woman coming to confession and then leaving after confession, and believe me there is a great difference in their appearance. The way they walk before confession, and the way they walk after. There is a great difference! It may be psychological, you see them coming and they are heavy, heavy with their sins. After confession they are light. They will say - 'Father I came to empty my sack'. They came to empty so that they will be filled with God's grace. This is the reason why in the community many times God blinds us, because if He allows us to see what there is in the community we would be afraid. We would say, 'I have enough trouble of my own. I can pray at home. I don't need this nonsense.' God blinds you so that you will step in, so that you will enter into a serious dialogue with Him, with His Word. He blinded them and He comes to talk. He is the One Who opens the dialogue. The initiative always comes from God! 'What is your problem, you seem down today?' What do they say in the community? 'Are you the only one in the community that does not know what is going on?' 'This one is saying this and the other one is saying that. I don't know.' You don't know! This guy told them you seem to be down and depressed. Rightly so, and of course so we are. 'Why, what is your problem about this Jesus of Nazareth?' 'Jesus of Nazareth, who is he?' 'Are you the only stranger! Are you the only stranger who does not know about these things?' What things?

Now you have to remember that in Hebrew the word davar can mean word spoken. It can mean event, an event in my life, and also it can mean a thing. "God said let there be light and there was light." The word is not an empty word. Once it comes out from the mouth of God, it does not return empty. It has to fulfill its mission and bring the fruits and bring the things. So they told Him 'what things?' Jesus Christ began to listen to them. He listens to our grumbling, our pain. He is not indifferent to all this. Then he began to open to them the Scriptures. The petition here "Open my eyes so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law." He began to talk to them about the Scripture, the law, the prophets, the psalmist, telling them that it was necessary for the Messiah to die. Did you notice the situation? It is a situation of hopelessness.

What is the situation where the Word of God is going to act? We had hoped that this guy was going to redeem Israel, but now it is already four days. For the Jewish people the soul can only stay in the body up to three days. If after three days you do not see any reaction then he is dead. But now if we had hope, we waited three days. We are in a hopeless situation. The way many times you and I find ourselves in front of a problem, in front of a wall. We forget what the palmist says, "With him on my side I can climb any wall." We say to our brother or our sister,'Oh don't lose heart! Don't lose heart sister, try to do your best. Where there is a will there is a way.' Yes! There is also a wall. There is not only a way but there is also a wall and if God is not with you, or you are not with God, then you cannot climb that wall. Sometimes we forget what the Gospel says, "Without me you can do nothing." So as we journey with Jesus Christ in life, we journey towards Easter, which is THE FEAST OF OUR FREEDOM.

How does God Who gave us the Ten Commandments, His Word, introduce Himself to you and to me? As the God of Freedom. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of bondage." The word for Egypt in Hebrew means fences. When you are enslaved , there is a fence around you. It controls what you can do and what you cannot do. What God did was He broke these fences. Sin enslaves us, but the Word of God sets us free! "If you continue in my Word, you will be truly my disciples. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free." So Jesus Christ gave them his Word and he began to explain to them using the Scripture. It was necessary that first you had to pass through Golgotha. If you want to experience the transfiguration, if you want to be able to see the glory of God, you have to pass through suffering. Scripture is clear about this. "My son if you come forward to serve the Lord prepare yourself for temptation, for as gold is tested in fire, so the acceptable person in the furnace of humiliation."

The Midrash says that there is more to that statement than what it says on the surface. They say the acceptable person is tested like gold. Fire tests gold and gold tests men. Gold tests man to see where he places his security, whether on gold, on material things and money or whether his security is on God. Jesus Christ is talking with them. In the meantime, darkness surrounds them. The darkness surrounds you and me. We say, 'But I am reading the Scriptures. I am saying the rosary. I am going to Mass. The more I try to be a good person, the more I try to lead a good life, I don't know, I don't feel anything. Darkness surrounds me and things seem to be getting worse.' Here is a beautiful saying that you should treasure in your hearts: 'God's promises are like the stars, the darker the night the brighter they shine.' In order to be able to see His Word radiating light in the darkness of our life, in order that we can understand that this Word is the light of every human being coming into the world, we read "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overpower it".

You are carrying, you say, the Word of God in your heart and you are down, depressed, lamenting, grumbling, judging everyone from God down. Even God you are judging because you know that God does not know what He is doing! They steal, people prosper and it is the good guy who suffers. We expect that because he is a good guy, he should not be sick. It reminds me of the story about the Rabbi who went to visit his friend. The son of his friend was sick, fourteen years old and dying. 'Rabbi pray for my son. He is such a good guy.' 'Your son, your son is bad. What are you talking about, good? Your son is bad.' 'Oh no Rabbi my son is not bad. My son knows the Torah very well. He reads it.' 'Knows the Torah, your son is ignorant about the Torah. What are you talking about? He knows nothing about the law of God.' Anything that the father said good about the son, the Rabbi knocked it to the ground. As it happened the child did not die, he recovered. The father was talking to his son. 'You know my son when the Rabbi came to visit us, everything that I said about you he knocked it down.'

'I was telling the Rabbi how good you are with the Torah. Do you know what he told me? He said that you are ignorant of the Torah, that you don't know anything about the Torah. I told him how good you are to other people, he told me that you were bad to other people.' 'Yes father, yes. Do you know why? The Rabbi wanted to convince God that I don't know anything about the Torah yet, so He should not take me, that I am still bad so He should give me time for conversion, because if I am good He can take me. That is why I recovered.'

By listening to the Word of God we see things totally different. What was the reaction of the disciples of Emmaus? They are surrounded by darkness. First they ask Him, "Are you the only stranger in the village? Are You a stranger who does not know anything?" Then this stranger, has to become a friend. Many times the history that God gives to you and to me is a strange history. We forget "My ways are not your ways. And my thoughts are not your thoughts." From a stranger they are being surrounded by darkness. Jesus Christ is pretending. He pretends, sometimes to you and to me, that he doesn't care about our problems. What do we say in our prayers? What do we say? 'Everyone knows. Everyone in the village knows, and You God, You seem to be a stranger to all of this. You don't know what is going on in my family, in my marriage. You do not respond to my pain.' Regardless of the fact that like Job, who lost patience when his friends came to his rescue. As long as it was OK with him and God, he could handle it, but when he entered into a crises and his friends came saying, "Examine yourself properly. You must have done something wrong." They pushed him to the limit to take God to court. He wanted to take God to court. God accepted to go to court. He said, 'Before we go and waste your money and your time, can I ask you a couple of questions? How many grains of sand are there on the beaches? How many stars are there in the sky?' What was the reaction? 'It would have been better had I not opened my mouth.' For you and for me, it would be better many times for us to stay in silence, not a negative silence, but in the silence to hear God speaking to us, telling you and me, 'You are the apple of my eye. How dare you say that I don't care about you! How can you say that? I took you out of Egypt. I paid the price with the blood of My Son, and you say that I don't care about you.'

The disciples of Emmaus surrounded with darkness, without knowing it are enlightened. They compelled him to come in. They did not invite him, they compelled him. Where is the invitation in the community? I'll tell you where it is. The Rule tells you that you have to make half an hour of meditation. You begin your meditation. You take off your watch and place it near you. Every now and then you glance at it. 'My God how long.' Then after a while only five minutes have passed. 'Are you sure that is the time? What was the time when I started? Oh yeah twenty-five minutes. What is the difference instead of thirty?' But if you invite Him in and compel Him instead, you pass the half hour to an hour. You fall in love with it and you want to know more about this God, because you want to see Him. You want to see Him because He does not see your argument. You say that you love Him. He says, 'I do not see your point. I do not see your thing.' That is why the psalmist has a beautiful thing. The psalmist says - and here, starting from myself, we can see our ignorance about the Word of God - the psalmist says, "Only one thing I ask of the Lord. To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life." One thing! Do you mean that he said that he wanted to stay in the church all of his life? One thing! That he doesn't need money? That he doesn't want to eat? Doesn't want to have a house? "One thing I ask of the Lord." In other words he is saying, 'What I say with my lips and what I have in my heart is in conformity. It is one thing. I don't say one thing with my lips and with my actions say something else. I don't say, 'Yes I want to be in community. I want to have the spirit of St. Teresa, the spirit of St. John of the Cross and love for the Word of God. There is no sense of sacrifice in the community, no sense of dying for your brother and sister, no sense of what St. Paul says, "bear the burdens of one another and so fulfil the law of Christ". Your reputation is too superficial. You want Jesus Christ to come into your life, but he will not. He won't. Scripture is clear about this. There are the Samaritans and the Galileans. Both of them welcomed him. St. John says in Chapter four that with the Samaritans he stayed two days. With the Galileans, he just carried on.

"They welcomed him but he did not stay." How serious were they? Sometimes we are not serious with each other either. You meet someone in the community, or anyone for that matter, and it is not uncommon to say, 'You know sometime we should meet and go out for a coffee.' ... or, 'Sometime you should come for lunch.' 'Yes you are right sometime.' 'Do you have your diary with you? When is it going to be? Oh don't worry, I'll give you a shout. No, I will call you myself.' OK she calls you and is serious about it. We say to God, 'Come in. Come into my life. God come into my family.' Come into your family? You are judging your husband left, right and center. Come into your family? You are judging your wife right, left and center. Come into your family! You don't even talk to your children. Come into your family! Do you know what He is going to do if He comes into your family? He is going to break down the dividing walls of hostility, those walls that you don't want broken down because you build them as fences to keep out pain. There is enough pain, I cannot take it any more. The best way to do it is to create a fence. You say 'I love him', but you stay at a distance. When you ask Christ to come in, you are like the Galileans. 'Come in. Why don't you come in.' 'Oh no, I am in a hurry. Thank you. Next time. Next time.' They compelled him, compelled him to come in. Because they compelled him, he is going to continue to enlighten them. You know, in the breaking of the bread, they began to see their fear being done away with, their anxieties are melting in front of their eyes. They are feeling it and it is real, to the extent that he vanished from their sight. Where did he go? He went into their hearts. At that very moment, at that very moment they stood up. They were people walking in the darkness, but now they are enlightened. There is a difference. If you are enlightened you can take the pain. If your are enlightened and the doctor comes and tells you, 'Look here you have this sickness, you have this disease.' 'What!' 'Oh, yes, but we have a cure for it.' OK I am enlightened. I am enlightened because there is light.

The Word of God heals. "He sent His Word and healed them." The Word of God comes to you and to me and tells us - "and let them know that I am their Lord, their God, their healer". That is what God said to Moses "and let them know that I am their Lord, their God, their healer." These people are enlightened. They are enlightened to embrace the cross rather drag it. St. Teresa is clear about this. She said, 'For many people, the cross breaks them to pieces, because they drag it'. They do not carry it. If we learn how to embrace it properly, grip it and carry it, then the cross, instead of allowing us to swallow the life that is bitter, will change our life, our bitterness into sweetness. We see examples of this in the Old Testament. The people saw the water 'mara' which means bitter. They ran to the water and the water was bitter. They grumbled and Moses turned to God. He asked Him, 'Why do you want to add insult to injury? Is it not enough that these people don't have water. Now You gave them bitter water!' God told him, 'I am going to show you a tree. Pluck it up. Put it in the water and the water will become sweet.' When we learn how to take the cross and put it into our life, then the darkness no longer has a grip. But, if we turn our back to the light that is the cross, because the cross is the face of God the Father radiating light in the darkness of our life, then our ego is so big that it is going to cast a shadow in front of us. That is when we stumble in our own shadow. In the Old Testament it is clear. "If the people listen to my words then the enemy will run away from them. If the people do not listen to my words even the sound of a leaf will scare them to death." It says, even the sound of a leaf moving, imagine the swords and the battle cry. They used to have the battle shout before they attacked to condition the people. They literally conditioned them. Even the sound of a leaf moving would scare them to death.

Now the disciples of Emmaus, like you and like me are a people whose eyes have been opened. They are seeing the marvel of God. What does it do? Oh that is beautiful, that is nice. Now it is joy. A long time ago I told you the definition of joy. Joy is peace dancing and peace is joy resting. Christ has said 'These things I have said to you that my joy may be in you and your joy will be complete." The Gospel is the Gospel of Peace. "Put on your feet the sandals of the Gospel of peace." These people now said to each other, "Were not our hearts full of joy when he was explaining the Scriptures to us?" They went and told their experience to the other disciples. The Lord is risen indeed. We saw him. But, these things that I have just said to you, you may know them. You might have heard me saying them before, though repetition never does any harm. It is not a waste of time.

Perhaps you did not follow what Scripture has to tell us further down. After we finish this notion of the disciples of Emmaus, they went out. These words seemed to them an ideal tale and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, stupefying and looking in he saw a linen cloth by itself. Then he went home amazed by what had happened. In chapter twenty-four we read, "Now on that same day two of the disciples were going to a village named Emmaus." This is the disciple of Emmaus. Then we continue on. "They stayed here while they were talking [they were together], Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you.' They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. They were discussing. They were saying, 'The Lord is risen indeed!'. They are saying these words. Then they told what had happened on the road and how He had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread." This is verse thirty-five-five.

Verse thirty-six "While they were talking about this, Jesus himself, stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you'. They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, 'Why are you frightened and why do doubts arise in your hearts?" Because with one ear you are hearing me telling you about the importance and power in the Word of God and it is sinking into your heart, and with your other ear the devil is telling you, 'I don't know.' That is good. You are sick and the Word of God comes and heals you from disease. That is good. I don't know, and so I stop taking medicine. I don't know. There are these doubts. God wants to sow His Word and the devil is there to take it out. There is nothing new about it! Nothing new!

We read about Abraham. Scripture tell us that Abraham was waiting for God to come and fulfill His part of the covenant. He was getting tired, sleepy. "The sun has gone down", Scripture tells us. Even the fire that Abraham was watching was diminishing. There was only a tongue of fire here and there appearing a little with the breeze. The birds of prey were coming down to steal the carcases. They were the sign of God's covenant. But Abraham stood up and scared them away. Are you scaring away these doubts? Are you hearing Jesus Christ telling you, 'Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your heart? Look at my hands and my feet, see that it is I myself. Touch me and see me, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. When he had said this he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?'. They gave him a piece of bread and a broiled fish. And he took it and ate it in their presence. Then he said to them, "These are my Words that I spoke to you while I was still with you. That everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and he said to them, 'Thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day. Repentance and forgiveness of sin is to be preached in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.'" But before the disciples of Emmaus told their experience to this group of people, once more Scripture tells us that their eyes were closed.

Their eyes, the eyes of the disciples were closed. Then here it tells us, that he opened their minds to understanding the Scripture. The eyes are the channels through which God's Word comes inside of us. The way too that ears are the channels through which God's Word comes inside of us. Why the eyes? Because also we use the expression, when you are talking with someone OK and you say, 'I don't see your point.' What do you see? You don't see! You have to hear it and understand it. I don't see your argument.. We don't say 'I don't understand.' We say 'I don't see it.' When we look around us nature is a divine handwriting. When we look around us we begin to discover, to see, that everything is marked with the finger print of God. Everything! We tell our children, 'God created everything'. Deep down we do not believe it. We don't believe it. We don't! We still carry on literally puffed up, growing up with this expression that God lives everywhere. Brothers and sisters, it is about time that we stop making this statement. It is about time! God lives where man lets Him in. It is not true that God lives everywhere! It is an empty statement as much as 'I love everyone'. I love everyone. Everyone, yes sure! If they stay far away from me, I love them more, but not when they step on my toes. When they step on my toes, it is something different. 'Love everyone.' 'God is everywhere.' Yes you are right, everywhere except in your heart. Everywhere! GOD DWELLS WHERE MAN LETS HIM IN. If we, like the disciples of Emmaus, let Him into our family, into our life, we too, like them, will discover that He has vanished from our sight and has began to dwell in our hearts. Like the disciples of Emmaus we say, "Were not our hearts full of joy when He was explaining to us the Scriptures." He will open our eyes to see the wonders of His love.