Spirituality of the Readings

Closer Away?

Your best friend is leaving town. There is no way to change things, it is certain. What do you do with your sorrow?

This is the scene we find in the Gospel for the Sixth Sunday of Easter. Jesus is trying to comfort the disciples because he is moving not just to a different town, he is about to move away from the world and into the Father’s arms.

Sounds like what we experience at a funeral. We are truly glad that our beloved no longer has the pains and shortages of this life. But what about us? We who are left behind do not get our burden lifted, we get more added to it. We are lonely for the one who has gone away.

Jesus dove into death and swam to the world's shore, but he could not stay on earth and be just like he was before. As he tells Mary Magdalene, he has to go to the Father. “If you loved me you would rejoice.”

He tells the disciples something more, and it is puzzling. “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. I am going away and I will come back to you.”

Going away but coming back? This is a strange formula, by which Jesus’ absence will make him much, much closer to us than he was before.

How can this be?

It is hard to express in so few words, but of course your author will rush in where angels fear to tread. I cannot guarantee that it will not seem abstract, but let's give it a try.

(1) Start with the pre-Jesus world. God the Father had been with the people for all eons. The First Testament tells about this over and over. Why is this not enough?

Well, God the Father remained unknowable in very important ways. He told one of the prophets he would pass by the mouth of the cave where the prophet is, but that the man must not look until God has gone past (really it says “you can only look upon my hindermost quarters”). To look directly upon God would destroy a human being (Exodus 33:20).

(2) To close this gap, God decides to tell us everything about himself in a way we can understand. He speaks out his very self, and he uses a Word that leaves nothing lacking. Humanity is the language, and Jesus is the Word spoken in that language. Now God can be known insofar as we know Jesus.

(3) Jesus dies, resurrects, and finally ascends to the Father from whom he came. Are we abandoned? No. Just like the Father, Jesus speaks out his own very self in another Word that leaves nothing of himself unsaid.

Christianity tells us that this Word is the Holy Spirit.

It is the interior Spirit of a human being called Jesus, who is already the very interior Spirit of God. We are to be closer to Jesus and to the Father than the apostles were!*

If you and I say yes to the Holy Spirit, we will know Jesus just as sheep knew the voice of their shepherd. In knowing him we will know the Father. We find Jesus in the Mass, in the Great Sacrament, in the people around us. We will be side by side with the closest presence of the God of love that is possible.

Was it too abstract? Well, it is the story of our very fleshly life with God. Let us put it into action.

John Foley, SJ

**From Saint Louis University