The Fourth Week invites us to share the disciples’ experience of Jesus’ resurrection. Here we present Jesus’ Appearance to Two of His Disciples on their Way to Emmaus in the second ending of Mark’s gospel (16:9-19) and supplement it with Luke’s description of this same story.

In 1986 the U.S. Bishops summarized Catholic teaching on government: “…the teachings of the Church insist that government has a moral function: protecting human rights and securing basic justice for all members of the commonwealth.” The bishops explained that, while all people have responsibility for the common good, government’s special role is to guarantee the minimum conditions for rich social activity, namely “human rights and justice.”

The Fourth Week invites us to share the disciples’ experience of Jesus’ resurrection. Here we present Jesus’ Appearance to Mary Magdalene in the second ending of Mark’s gospel (16:9-19) and supplement it with John’s description of this same appearance story.

Back in October, at the time of the Synod on the Amazon, there was much attention paid to the images of the pregnant woman, larger and smaller, present in the scene set up to mark the Synod. Later these were transferred to a nearby church.

The Fourth Week invites us to share the disciples’ experience of Jesus’ resurrection. They claimed to have seen Jesus alive, not in a dream or as an apparition, but in the bodily form they had known him before he was crucified.

In Catholic thought, “authentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the divine image” within the human person. Created in God’s image, every person has “the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being.” We have a duty to respect each one’s right to exercise freedom as essential to human dignity.