Spirituality of the Readings

Stay a While

At schools such as Saint Louis University the students and their life-networks fly away at the end of each school year. Maybe since the pandemic and its stay-at-home customs, this will change, or else has already done so, but in any case, the school always misses its students in their absence.

In my own college days, if I stayed on after the last day, there were empty halls and rooms and broad, completely undisturbed yards of grass. Yes, we were all glad to have the year done. But at the same time, why were the buildings deserted, and where is the buzzing life of intermingling students? Is zoom the wave of the future?

This phenomenon might be a tiny pointer to the hollowness that the disciples must have felt after Jesus was gone, especially the women who had loved him so much. His passion had been the worst part for them. What sort of lives were his followers supposed to lead after the very center of their lives had been taken away?

Well, you say, there was the resurrection. Correct. But we have seen how confusing this was to the disciples. Doubting Thomas said, “I will not believe this unless I put my hands on him.” And Jesus' new presence did not last so very long, did it? Suddenly there was this week’s “Ascension,” and it emptied their lives all over again.

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

How should we understand this?

We might say that he had graduated from life into Life. Having tunneled through the tight passageway of death—as you and I certainly will do one day—he had given everything he was and everything he possessed to the Father, out of sheer love.

But instead of there being nothing left for us, there was now humanity transformed: a divine human person had opened himself all the way and was now marked with a totality of love. He was on his way back to the dynamic, swirling, Trinitarian circle of love from which his humanity came forth in the first place. He had lingered only in order to tell us about it, to comfort us, to ease the loss!

Can you or I sense Jesus in his resurrection and ascension, in his immense act of humble love, poured into us and known to us ever since by his Holy Spirit? We are 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. (Second Reading).

This meant that Jesus would continue to be alive within the world after all, but in a different form: the Holy Spirit’s presence within our world. Loss and absence were to be turned into real presence: God among us.

In the Eucharistic Prayer and in the reception of Communion we take his body and blood into our own body and blood. His Spirit helps us accept his life, death, and resurrection. These settle into us and into others around us.

This real presence can now abide forever in our midst, urging us, gently nudging us to say yes, even in today’s sad world.

John Foley, SJ

**From Saint Louis University