Spirituality of the Readings

Stay with Us

A presider at one post-quarantine mass admitted, with a beautiful poignancy, how much he missed the students. They and their networks of life had flown away at the end of each year to cope with living apart from each other, and course this went triple for the pandemic.

I can remember the same type of longing back in my own college days. When I travelled home I came from empty halls and empty rooms within broad, undisturbed yards of grass. Yes, we were all glad to have the school year done with, but at the same time, the buildings were now deserted, and the buzzing life of intermingling students was gone. 

This must have been the kind of hollowness felt by the disciples in the sudden absence of Jesus from their world. Especially was this true of the women—who had loved him so much. The passion had been the worst part, as we said last week. What could ever fill such cavernous emptiness? Having tunneled through the narrow passageway of death—as you and I will do one day—we had seen Jesus giving everything he was to the Father out of sheer love. What sort of lives could any Christian have after the very center of their lives had been taken away?

Alright, you say, but there was the resurrection.

Correct, but we saw last week how confusing this new resurrected presence was to the disciples. “I will not believe this unless I put my hands on him,” said doubting Thomas. And Christ’s new presence did not last so very long, did it?

There was an event called the Ascension that again “emptied the school yards,” so to speak, all over again. It was joyous, yes, but why did he have to go so far away, and forever?

But of course, instead of there being nothing left, there was now humanity transformed. Jesus had graduated from life into LIFE. He was marked with the totality of love and was on his way back to the dynamic swirling, Trinitarian circle of love from which his humanity had issued in the first place. He lingered after the Resurrection mainly in order to tell us about it, to comfort us, to ease the loss.

“Stay in Jerusalem until my Spirit comes to fill your heart,” Jesus said to his followers. (First Reading from the Ascension).

Ok, but quite difficult to understand.

They were to be

filled with all humility and gentleness, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit. (Ephesians 4:2-5)

And that was their answer and ours. The immense act of modest love that was the resurrection was now to be poured into believers. Jesus would continue to be alive within the world after all, but in a different form, that of the Holy Spirit. God the Spirit would be alive within their bodies and those of their neighbors. Loss and absence would be turned into real presence. These would linger in time by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

In the Eucharistic Prayer and Communion, we take his body and blood into our body and blood. The Spirit helps us accept his whole life, death, and resurrection as these settle into us and into others around us. This real presence now abides forever in our midst, urging us, gently nudging us to say yes.

To put it another way, school is not out.

John Foley, SJ

**From Saint Louis University