‘Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.’

It always seemed a pity that today’s Gospel reading is left until two weeks after Easter for there is a wonderful humanity in Saint Luke’s story of the evening of that first Easter Day. It is a story that always seemed much more readily accessible to sceptical people than did the stories from Easter morning.

The despondent disciples who are walking the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus are joined by a stranger who walks with them and discusses all that …