Why Couldn't the Disciples Recognize Christ?

On "Seeing" Our Lord

     After listening to two homilies on the subject of recognizing Our Lord post-Resurrection, I realized that there was a wealth of details to draw out of this interesting phenomenon.  Here are a few of the thoughts that have occurred to me so far:
     First, that the disciples and Apostles exhibit a need to "see" Our Lord.  Peter and John run to the tomb to see, Mary Magdalene and Thomas have to see, even to touch Our Lord. Seeing Christ is incredibly important throughout the Gospels, even all of Scripture.  Simeon's words come to mind: "Now dismiss your servant Lord ... because my eyes have seen Your Salvation", as do the words of the beggar Bartimaeus: "Lord that I may see."  After the devastation of the Passion and Death of Our Lord, the disciples needed to see His resurrection.  Yet paradoxically, they cannot see Him, at least at first.
    Unlike Lazarus, or the daughter of Jairus, or the widow of Naim's son, Our Lord was not recognized by those who encountered him after His Resurrection.  Why was this?  The common understanding is, that when He arose from the Dead, Jesus' body was glorified and no longer subject to the conditions of mere earthly existence.  The Gospels describe this in the various appearances He makes post-Resurrection.  Our Lord walks through walls and doors, appears instantly in locations far apart, and appears to undergo no bodily suffering.  He does eat (a whole monogram's worth of discussion, there), but seemingly more to prove His physicality than to satiate His hunger.  The Glorified Body of Our Lord is thus the means by which He gradually reveals Himself to the disciples after Easter.  These revelations bear significance, such as at Emmaus--with the breaking of the bread--or to Mary Magdalene, in the guise of a gardener (this recalls the Garden of Eden, the suffering servant of Isiah, etc).  This seeing or coming to see Jesus is really a coming to understand Jesus, the fulfillment of the Covenant; Jesus was the fulfillment of the Covenant, and our seeing him is the fulfillment, since as He Himself says: this is eternal life: That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:4)   The disciples' desire to see and know Our Lord is our own desire, our own need, which we must seek to fulfill.
    The fulfillment of the desire to see can perhaps be understood when we look at the orders of Grace and Nature.  One of the most essential aspects of our Catholic Faith revolves around the dual order of Grace and Nature, found in each one of us.  We all have the nature of human-ness, and the calling to grace, that is, a participation in the life of God, by which we are made His Sons and Daughers, truly divinized.  This Life consists of the seeing and loving of God, which ability and vision He gives by Sanctifying Grace. 
    Now, the problem for the disciples, is that they have not yet been confirmed in grace, and they cannot yet utilize the graces God had bestowed in His Son; they had to wait until Pentecost.  The disciples could not see with God's eyes, and thus could not see God Himself, Our Lord Jesus Christ, once He no longer was limited to His prior human mode of existing (in terms of His human nature, of course).  Once confirmed in Faith at Pentecost, the disciples had the confidence of the theological Virtue of Faith, and could share that Faith.  But here's the difficult part: we are like the disciples and Apostles, even with the Life of Grace.  The disciples had had the gift of seeing our Lord in his daily ministry over three years, and that carried them through the time of separation (A little while and you shall not see Me, and again a little while and you shall see Me.)
    This difficulty, then, shows how we are to approach "seeing" Christ.  If we are to be able to live a life of Faith, and see Our Lord, we have to do two things.  We have to live a life of grace, the Sacraments.  Yet, Our Lord remains veiled here, and we cannot "see" Him in the way the disciples did.  Thus, as a first step, yet also as an ongoing step, we must do all we can to make Our Lord present to us, we must live the Gospels, as if He were once again among us.  If faith builds on reason, then Our supernatural knowledge of Jesus Christ will build on a proper human understanding of Him.  After all, as St. Jerome said, "Ignorance of Scriptures is Ignorance of Christ."  The likelihood of private revelation is not particularly high for those of us in the modern world, so all we have to fall back on in order to see, to know God, are the life of grace, and the revelation of Christ in the Sacred Scriptures.  We can "see" Our Lord and touch Him in the Sacraments and Scripture.  With Faith, we can know the realities of the Sacraments and the meanings of Scripture, but according to nature, we need a real human idea of Whom Christ was.  If we seek these, in the loving care of Holy Mother Church, then we can be, unlike doubting Thomas--who had to directly see and touch our Lord--those who "have not seen, yet still believe."   Christ is Risen!

-Quaestor