Not many church meetings send one away uplifted, but the local Catholic Peace and Justice group are a delight to be with. The meetings address the most serious issues in our world, tonight it was AIDS in Africa, but there is a positive mood in every meeting, a sense that this is an issue that we can address, a sense that Jesus walks alongside all our efforts.

Jesus walking alongside us changes everything, as it did with the two walking to Emmaus. The morale of the disciples had hit rock-bottom in the hours after the awful events of that Friday in Jerusalem. Everything had been lost, every hope destroyed, every expectation smashed. They were left a battered, disheartened, directionless group, who had no idea what would now happen. Then in a moment all is changed. Those two disciples who had given up hope, and had gone back to Emmaus to continue their ordinary lives, suddenly have their eyes opened and the whole world is a different place.

It is almost impossible for us to imagine the depths of their gloom and despondency, and just as hard to imagine the power of the morale change that came into their lives. It was a morale change that was so profound that it changed them from a ragged and motley group of individuals into a world-changing movement. The disciples were a group entirely without resources or organization in a world that was violently hostile

The morale change came with a sense of the power of Christ in their hearts. “Were not our hearts burning within us?â€? say the pair who would have run from Emmaus back to Jerusalem. The disciples met the outside world, and changed it beyond recognition.

The Jesus who walked the road to Emmaus walks with the people I met this evening.