http://cms.usccb.org/bible/readings/042620.cfm
Many of us make plans for tomorrow, and days beyond tomorrow in anticipation of that which we look forward too. Today's preparations lead us into tomorrow, becoming today. In other words we are living in the eternal today, or the endless now as understood by those who have twigged that their life in the care of The Saviour is never about the past, or future...it is life lived in the eternal now.
Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which-miraculously, it seems-merge into a significant event. It provides the neatest paradigm of the bisociation of previously separate contexts, engineered by fate.
Coincidences are puns of destiny. In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot;
in the coincidental happening, two strings of events are knitted together by invisible hands. ~ Arthur Koestler
Today's Gospel recalls a chance encounter somewhere along a road being travelled by two of Jesus' apostles deeply distressed by the execution of Jesus, desperate to flee Jerusalem fearing a similar fate, when by perceived chance they meet a sympathetic fellow traveller
concerned for their depressed state of mind.
Two thousand years ago people travelled between towns in "caravans," strangers seeking mutual security in sufficient numbers safeguarding them from bandit assaults.
Jesus' two apostles had no idea that the person with whom they were sharing their feelings, fears, frustrations and regrets was none other than the man whose death they were grieving. They were so absorbed by their sorrow that His presence travelling at their side had yet to penetrate their awareness.
Conscious and unconscious experiences do not belong to different compartments of the mind; they form a continuous scale of gradations, of degrees of awareness. ~ Arthur Koestler
We can be blinded by rationalising all, and everything that we have learnt to believe is not possible; not fathomable, the result of incarcerating ourselves within a cell of our own construction, where such "reasoning" would appear an absurdity, therefore rejected out of fear we may be treading into the territory of the insane.
Jesus' two apostles were relaxed by the pleasant disposition, and helpful conversation provided by the stranger who had befriended them. His empathy, and constructive advice served them at a time they needed help to deal with the loss of their much loved friend, Jesus of Nazareth sitting with them sharing food that would open their eyes to a reality that previously had eluded them.
A New day, in the eternal now.
The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.
~ Arthur Koestler
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