ZENIT reports the Pope’s encouragement that, even though the trials of life can make one feel abandoned by the Lord, an encounter with the Risen Christ can help recover the hope of faith.  The Pope said this on 6 April 2008  in a commentary on the Gospel account of the meeting of Jesus with two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

“This drama of the disciples of Emmaus is as a mirror of the situation of many Christians of our time. It seems that the hope of faith has failed.  Faith itself enters into crisis because of negative experiences that make us feel like we are abandoned by the Lord. But this road to Emmaus on which we travel can become a way of purification and maturation of our believing in God.”

The Holy Father continued: “Even today we can enter into conversation with Jesus listening to his word. Even today he breaks the bread for us and gives himself as our bread.

“And in this way the encounter with the risen Christ, which is possible even today, gives us a deeper and more authentic faith, tempered, so to speak, by the fire of the Easter event; a robust faith because it is nourished not by human ideas, but by the word of God and by his presence in the Eucharist.”