At schools such as Saint Louis University the students and their life-networks always fly away at the end of each school year. Or at least drive away. The school always misses them. And now, in this wake of the Pandemic, especially so.
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 is the wave of the future?
All this must be a pointer to the hollowness that the disciples surely felt after the crucifixion. It was true especially of the women who had loved Jesus so much.
The passion had been the worst part for all of them.
What sort of lives could Jesus’ followers find 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 didn’t it empty their lives all over again?
We might say that Jesus 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.
Instead of there being nothing left for humankind, there was now humanity transformed: a divine human person who had opened himself all the way and who was now marked with the totality of love. He was on his way back to the dynamic, swirling, Trinitarian circle of love from which his humanity had issued in the first place.
After the Resurrection he had lingered only 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 (Ascension, First Reading). They were going 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)
Can you or I follow Jesus in his resurrection and ascension, his immense act of humble love poured into us and ever since known to be the Holy Spirit? Jesus would continue to be alive within the world after all, but in a different form: the Holy Spirit’s presence within our own human bodies. Loss and absence have been turned into real presence.
In the Eucharistic Prayer and in 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 now abides forever in our midst, urging us, gently nudging us to say yes.
