WEDNESDAY IN THE OCTAVE OF EASTER: He and his missionaries wanted the hearts of all those who listened to burn within them

Posted on April 12, 2023 by franksantucci

Then they said to each other,
“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”

Luke 24: 32

During Easter we are invited to spend time with Scripture. Like the disciples let us let him explain his Word to us and set our hearts on fire in our everyday existence.

Saint Eugene’s life was dedicated to explaining the Good News of salvation to those who were most in need. He and his missionaries wanted the hearts of all those who listened to burn within them. The invitation he wrote in the Rule of 1818 continues today:

Our one and only aim should be to instruct people…
not only to break the bread of the Word for them but to chew it for them as well;
in a word, to ensure that when our discourses are over,
they are not tempted to heap foolish praise on what they have not understood,
but, instead, that they go back home edified, touched, instructed, able to repeat in their own family circle what they have learned from our mouth.

At times we feel like those disciples who wanted to shut themselves into their own isolation in Emmaus. Let’s open our eyes to recognize the presence of the Risen Jesus alongside us.  Let us spend some time with his Gospel. As we break the bread of the Word, he helps us to chew it – and our hearts will burn within us.

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One Response to WEDNESDAY IN THE OCTAVE OF EASTER: He and his missionaries wanted the hearts of all those who listened to burn within them

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Lay Oblate says:
    April 12, 2023 at 13:20

    Will I ever forget the moment I heard Jesus say my name and claim me as His own? Each time I share that my heart burns within me just as it does now.

    Iremember the moments that Eugene’s first letter to Henri Tempier was read aloud to me. I began to cry as I experienced Eugene’s invitation as being personal to me as he told me to stand at the foot of my crucifix before hearing his words. How did he know that I was just finding my place at the foot of the Cross…

    These moments burning within me, becoming engraved in my heart…

    Last night many of the members of our Oblate Family gathered together via zoom, to get to know each other more deeply, to pray and be together and then to break into small groups and share our experience of Easter. I felt my heart burning within me as I recognized the joy of our Risen Christ within the stories shared by the others in my group. I shared how at the Vigil I heard the 2nd Reading from Genesis and recognized in the story of Abraham and his son as a foreshadowing of Jesus, son of God becoming the living sacrifice… and my heart burned within me for although this reading was not new to me – I experienced it in a different way as the Word of God touched my heart. My heart burns within me as I revisit and recollect those moments from yesterday evening…

    This morning also a breaking of the Word, and for each of us experiencing a fire burning more deeply within us…

    Reply

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