Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
This seventh Sunday in Easter comes right between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday,
right in the middle of our novena in preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Thank God that in this diocese we are still able to celebrate Ascension on Thursday.
Sort of, to me it interrupts the novena and it's a bit confusing when it's transferred to Sunday,
but it gives us the opportunity today to reflect upon this middle period
between the Ascension of our Lord into heaven
and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Our Lord promised the Holy Spirit to his apostles
and he explained to them the reason it was necessary that he should, so to speak,
leave them in order that the Holy Spirit should come.
We hear this way in which our Lord prepares his apostles
for the mystery of his passion for the Holy Spirit.
Ascension, death, and resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit
during these later parts of Easter as we listen to the readings from the Gospel of St. John,
most of which are taken from the last discourse at the Last Supper.
These profound passages from the Gospel that are seen nowhere else,
not in the other three Gospels, only in St. John's Gospels,
the Gospel where our Lord speaks things to his apostles
that he said to no one else, calling them into his intimate fellowship
and preparing them for his service, heroic service,
in which they will be called to imitate the Lord.
And we can think about the mystery,
the mystery of the Ascension and Pentecost
and this middle period that we find ourselves in now
by reflecting that our Lord at Ascension
leaves in order to fulfill a promise.
And in one sense, he does leave us.
And in another sense, he stays with us
or he brings us with him, better yet.
He says at the Last Supper that unless he goes,
the other paraclete will not come.
But it's necessary that he should go.
And when the apostles see our Lord ascend into heaven,
they continue, as we're told in the Acts of the Apostles,
to look up into the sky after he's gone.
And basically, an angel taps him on the shoulder and says,
why are you looking up into heaven?
He who has ascended into heaven will come back the same way.
And he reminds them of the words that our Lord had spoken to them,
the promises that he had made
and the directives that he had given them.
And so they went back to the Cynical
to wait for the Holy Spirit.
And of course, after the Holy Spirit came,
they were empowered to live like our Lord did,
you know, with courage and heroism.
So in one sense, our Lord did leave them,
but he left them with faith.
And...
just as all of them were weak before Pentecost,
especially before the resurrection,
so after our Lord ascended into heaven,
he would empower them to believe all the words
that he had spoken to them.
He told them that the Holy Spirit would remind them
of all the words he had spoken.
And on the day of our Lord's resurrection,
when Mary was distraught beside herself
because she couldn't find the body of Jesus,
when she finally did find Jesus,
recognizing him in the one that she originally thought
was the gardener, our Lord said,
do not touch me, I have not yet ascended to my Father.
And that was our Lord's way of saying to her
and to all of his followers, also to us,
you know, that you've heard my words,
I've told you over and over what you need to do,
and yet you're still clinging to me
in a kind of a natural way.
When I'm no longer visible to you,
when you can no longer see me
the way you're used to seeing me,
no longer attached to the consolations
that up until now you've been attached to,
then you will really be able to reach out to me.
Then you will really be able to find me.
So it was necessary that our Lord should ascend into heaven
in one sense that we might begin to live his teaching
and cling to his words and his commandments,
which is really the bottom line for the following of Christ,
as it was even the bottom line
for those who were able actually to see him,
for Peter, James, and John, and Mary Magdalene,
and our Blessed Mother as well.
We're all called before anything else to cling to his words.
And so we are not disadvantaged
because we are not like the apostles
who are able to actually hear the words
and see our Lord perform the deeds
that we read about in the scriptures.
We are not at all at a disadvantage
because it was necessary that this should happen for all of us.
We have all been given,
we have all been given the gift of faith.
And so our Lord has left us with faith
that we might find him.
And we do find him when we believe what the church teaches,
when we believe the teachings of sacred scripture,
when we do the best that we can each and every day of our life
to make choices that are consistent
with our Lord's teaching.
All of us, for example, especially you children,
find the will of God in a life of obedience.
You know, we believe because our Lord chose to obey,
became one of us and fulfilled his heavenly Father's will
by being obedient to his mother,
that we also find God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit
when we do what is expected of us according to our daily duty.
And for kids, that means, you know, obeying your parents.
That's an act of faith.
You know, we don't feel Jesus, Jesus's presence,
all the time.
And sometimes when our parents ask us to do something
we don't want to do, we don't feel like Jesus is there.
We may feel angry or rebellious or whatever,
but our faith tells us that that's the will of God for us
and that we find God's grace, his presence,
and his divine providence there.
You know, that's the challenge of our faith.
It seems as though God may not be there all the time,
but we know that if we do his will,
which is clear to us from the scriptures
and from our daily duty and from, you know,
what's expected of us in terms of obedience,
we know that we do find God's will there.
You know, but our Lord has also told us
that he would not leave us orphans
and that he would be with us until the end of the world.
This is the promise that our Lord makes at Pentecost,
and he also promises the coming of the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit does come, of course,
and he fills the apostles, you know, the apostles,
with his grace and power.
And whereas before Pentecost they were weak and fearful,
after Pentecost, immediately after Pentecost,
the moment the Holy Spirit came, they became bold and courageous.
And one of the most common words if you were to do a word search
on the Acts of the Apostles, do it like, you know,
go to one of the biblical tools that are available
on the internet and do a word search, you'd find, you know,
you'd find that bold or boldly is one of the most common words
in the Acts of the Apostles
to describe their behavior after Pentecost.
They boldly spoke the word of God in the face of opposition.
And that was because while the Lord had left in one sense,
in another sense, he had taken the apostles with them and all
of us with him, rather, with him into his victory.
The victory is already won, and the power
of the resurrection is already won.
The resurrection is already ours.
And we live not only in view of the final and complete grace
of the resurrection that we will experience in heaven,
but we also live right now in possession of that grace.
In a sense, our Lord has taken us with him to heaven.
Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, or blessed, I don't remember
if she's even canonized yet, but she used to refer,
to the indwelling of the blessed trinity,
and she used to call her soul the heaven of my soul
because that's where God dwelt.
And our Lord constantly refers to the fact that the kingdom
of God is within us.
It's already present to us because of the presence
of the Holy Spirit in our souls, which is the first gift of God,
and because of divine love, supernatural charity,
which is infused into our souls at the moment of baptism.
As long as we remain in the state of grace, God continues to dwell
within our soul, and we possess the kingdom right now.
And in the face of opposition, temptation, difficulty,
or distress, we are always in possession of God's kingdom,
as long as we remain in the state of grace.
And for the saints, you know, for the Lord,
the apostles after Pentecost, that was their continuous
and constant consolation in the face of opposition.
St. Paul, you know, went through, as he tells us
in his letters, he went through beatings and imprisonment
and distress and shipwreck and contradiction
and persecution constantly for the love of God and never,
never turned back from the path because he had the joy
of God's grace
within his soul and constantly kept that before his eyes
and was, you might say, in a sort of stable and peaceful state
of mind and soul because he understood how fully he
possessed God already.
You know, sometimes we live up to that, very often we do not,
but we are constantly striving always to move forward
in the spiritual life and to behave in a more supernatural
and courageous way.
It is not easy and even the saints faltered,
but they ultimately persevered.
One, you know, true and great example for all of us, of course,
is St. Peter who, you know, was impetuous and impulsive and,
you know, always shooting off his mouth and not living
up to his words, you know.
On the night before our Lord died, he promised that he would,
you know, even go to death with our Lord and, you know,
our Lord had to, you know, put him in his place and remind him
that not only would he not go to death with him,
that he would betray him three times,
but that after his restoration he would become a strength
for his brethren and, in fact, that was the case.
But there is a great story even towards the end
of St. Peter's life where sometimes he faltered, you know,
on the way out of Rome on the Appian Way,
near the catacombs of St. Callistus.
There's a little church called the Church of Quo Vadis
and the tradition is that during the persecution of Nero,
St. Peter said, enough is enough, I'm out of here.
And he left Rome, he was walking out of Rome
because he was fearful and he believed it, you know,
wasn't in his best interest at that point to remain behind.
And he was walking out on the Appian Way and as he got,
near to the spot where this church is now, since built,
he saw a traveler along the road coming into Rome
and as the traveler got closer he saw
that it was our Lord walking into Rome.
And he walked right past St. Peter without saying a word,
just, you know, didn't pick up his head or look at St. Peter
but just continued steadfastly to walk back into Rome.
And St. Peter stopped
and turned around and was, you know, flabbergasted
and he said, Quo Vadis Domine?
Where are you going, Lord?
And our Lord said to St. Peter, I'm going back to Rome
to die in your place once again.
And so St. Peter, you know, turned around and walked back
to Rome and steadfastly after that died for Christ
as the head of the church.
We're all, you know, you know,
we're all sort of in that predicament throughout our lives
to some extent.
We're grappling with the cross.
That is, you know, the crux of the problem
and that's the pun is intended.
Everything, you know, is, centers on the cross.
The cross is like a cross hair, you know.
It's the focal point of everything, you know.
And one of the reasons why, you know, it's important
to have the Eucharist in the center of the church
and the Holy Spirit.
And to appreciate the symmetry of a church is
because it focuses our intention, you know,
where it should be on the altar, the cross and the tabernacle.
Because this is where everything of value
in our lives ultimately takes its meaning and takes place.
We're called to unite ourselves in confidence and hope and faith
with the cross of Christ and to believe in the power of God.
And to pray as we wait for Pentecost for that power.