I have seen the Lord...

There's a lovely gentleness and simplicity to the Risen Jesus' encounters with his disciples and friends, which we read this week. There's no drama: none of the quaking earth and awe-inspiring angels which greet the women in Matthew's Gospel; no blinding lights or manifestations of divinity. All we have are the bewildering testimony of an empty tomb, and some very quietly powerful meetings in ordinary places in which Jesus comes, not to dazzle or demonstrate his might, but to console and strengthen and fill those he loves with joy.

And in these encounters we see the disciples unaware of just who walks and talks with them; we see dialogue, disbelief, confusion... and finally recognition, arising from a well-known voice, a familiar gesture, an everyday action, a name spoken with love.

And isn't this how Jesus so often walks and talks with us? Not with pyrotechnics but with a presence which causes our hearts to burn within us; not in ostentation or drama but in simplicity and subtlety, and in ordinary, everyday life. Religious experience can be dazzling or intensely overwhelming or extraordinary, but, more often, it is a sudden heart's leap at a few words from scripture... a fleeting moment of clarity... a quiet Voice gently breaking through our concerns and calling us to something new... a recognition of the One we love.

And then, like Mary Magdalene, we too can declare, with quiet certainty, I have seen the Lord...