The second "place or room" where our being drawn into Christ's mission community can occur is in the "living with" the resurrected one - the part of new life that no longer can be threatened by death.

Ignatius  proposes Easter texts for meditation in this fourteenth week and invites the one doing the exercises to pray for grace to experience joy with the resurrected one.  Clearly the experience of the disciples between Easter and Ascension was extraordinary and unique.  The resurrected One encountered them with distinct, life transforming appearances which came to an end with his Ascension.  After almost two thousand years how can we learn to meditate on these Easter stories today so that their meaning is revealed to us?  The answer assumes again our "ability to use symbols". These appearances were also signs or symbols that pointed beyond themselves.  What was a visible sign then is still the same reality for us today, only in a different way: "lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age."  (Matt. 28:20).

In this week we take up and deepen once more what we practiced earlier as the "Prayer of loving attentiveness".  Here we want to modify the phrase, "Prayer of loving watchfulness".  We shall do this in three ways:

- First, attentiveness, watchfulness is important because we can do nothing by ourselves to experience the reality of the resurrected one in our life.  We can only wait for when, how or if, it is given to us.  If entering into the "suffering with" Christ is something to which a person must be called by God or not called at all, then that is even more true for everything that "living with" Christ involves for experiencing the Easter reality in the midst of this life.  It does not lie within our power to gain a share of the resurrected life of the Lord.  Here all human activity is set aside and what happens is offered as pure gift to the receiver.

- Secondly, attentiveness, watchfulness is necessary because the Easter reality often touches us where we had not expected: in the midst of death we experience life.  Furthermore, when Christ encounters us as the risen one he does not take away from us the pain and suffering of this life once and for all.  Christ's words to Peter, "Lead you where you do not wish to go", began precisely there where Peter was encountered by the risen One (John 21:18).  That concurs with what we experience in real life.  The Easter reality sheds light here and there, sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger.  But it remains connected to the domain of death, pain and suffering of this world.  Therefore, it is not seeking joy that makes me responsive to the reception of the Easter reality and which draws me into "living with" the resurrected one.  On the contrary, it is precisely the taking on of pain in connection with Christ.  The only thing we can do ourselves to prepare for the experience of Easter in our life is the readiness to suffer with Christ, not in high sounding resolutions but in accepting what is assigned to us by God.  This timely illumination of the truth of Easter in the midst of death seems closely connected with the fact Jesus as the resurrected One did not remain continually with his disciples, but appeared to them only a few times.  That was enough for them to be able to share in his Easter victory.

- Thirdly, attentiveness, watchfulness is decisive because the reality of the risen One often touches our life in a way we can easily overlook.  This touch is so tender and soft, almost undetectable, that the risen One himself must open the "eyes of our heart" again and again so that we can recognize the living One in this touch.

Perhaps we have already experienced a moment in our life of being touched by joy even though the suffering remained.  Suddenly, unsought and unintended, joy welled up in the midst of pain, the very depth of our suffering.  When that happens, when we, in whatever form, actually experience something of the impossible - joy in the midst of pain, a yes in the middle of a no - there we can anticipate what "living with" the resurrected One can mean.  We can feel something of that which the resurrected One incorporates in us in a new quality of life, in a new reality of living, which is no longer threatened by death.

How that happens is completely different for every individual.  What the first witnesses of the resurrection experienced still applies to us: the living One always appears in a new way.   Seldom did they recognize him immediately.  It may be possible that we have already had Easter experiences in our life without realizing it.  The resurrected One may already have encountered us without us recognizing him.  Perhaps our eyes were closed and there was no one was present who could say to us: "It is the Lord!" (John 21:7).  Therefore, it is important to perceive the Easter reality wherever it breaks through with clearer awareness, with an attentive heart that is inseparably bound to the profound prayer that God will open the eyes of our heart.

Recently I experienced something that became a symbol picture for this form of attentive and expectant prayer.   A Jewish visitor told me that still today festival days for a Jewish family begins after the third star has appeared in the heavens the preceding evening. The oldest boy is sent out to wait for this moment and then reports immediately to the household: "Now it is here!"   Waiting for the first star to appear in the dark heavens became an image for me of attentive waiting for being drawn into the new imperishable life of the risen one.