This passage is rich with imagery as well as understatement. The disciples, jailed for being followers of Jesus, are visited by an angel who “open[s] the prison doors” and tells them to go out “and tell the people the whole message about this life.”
What is the whole message? What is this life?
Immerse yourself in the passage as St. Ignatius would have you do; employ your full imagination and all your senses. Are you the high priest? A prison guard? The captain of the temple? Put yourself in the sandals of a disciple or in the robe of a perplexed elder. What do you see, hear, smell, feel? What does the angel look and sound like? Are you amazed by an empty, locked prison cell? What do the disciples say in the temple? What do the people hear? What do you hear?
—Christine Brunkhorst is an alumna of Santa Clara University and Marquette University. A Twin Cities Ignatian Associate, she teaches English to adult immigrants at Learning in Style School in Minneapolis.