Burning Hearts
“For the Souls in Purgatory – Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord”
Luke 24:32
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?’
Grace Prayed For
Lord, awaken in us hearts that burn with your word, that we might recognize you in the breaking of bread and the breaking open of our lives.
Reflection
Recognition came late, but the burning had been there all along.
This is one of the most beautiful details in all of Easter: the two disciples, sitting at table in Emmaus, suddenly realized that the stranger who had walked with them had been doing something to their hearts for hours. The warmth, the strange hope, the sense that Scripture was coming alive as he spoke — they had felt it all during the journey. They had not named it. Now they did.
We might ask ourselves: how often does God’s presence move through us quietly, without announcement, and only later — at a table, in a moment of stillness, in conversation with a trusted friend — do we look back and say, ‘Something was happening there’?
The spiritual life is full of these retrospective recognitions. A book we read at the right moment. A conversation that lingered. A homily we half-dismissed that kept returning to us in the middle of the night. A season of loss that, years later, we can see was also a season of formation. The burning was there. We just didn’t have language for it yet.
For retreat and small group settings, this is an invaluable spiritual practice: the examen of burning. Looking back over recent weeks or months and asking, ‘Where was my heart warm? What drew me, stirred me, troubled me in a way that felt significant?’ Not every spiritual movement announces itself as such. The disciples walked miles with the Risen Christ and didn’t know it until the meal.
Invite your group into this kind of gentle retrospection. Where has your heart been burning? What has the Spirit been quietly doing that you’re only now beginning to name?
The road behind you may be richer than you realized.
When Time Allows Reflect on the Posts in Library and Musings
Sharing
Jesus last words on Earth were to his disciples, can be found in Matthew Chap 28 when Jesus told his disciples, “Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
Jesus calls all of us to share in his redemptive mission here on Earth. I would ask you to share this Scripture reflection with your family, your friends and your acquaintances, and then share it with a couple of individuals that you may may not be comfortable sharing with, keeping in mind always the words of Jesus, And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age
Author was assisted by AI in the drafting of this Post