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| Blake |
John 16: 24-33
Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray
from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be
fulfilled.
All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But
the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will
tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full,
knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On
that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask
the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you
have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the
Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.
I leave the sense world again and return to the
world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”
Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking
in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed
to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This
makes us believe that you came from God.”
Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your
heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be
scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I
am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.
All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may
find peace. In this world you will have great fear and hardship. But take
courage. I have overcome the world.”
Thursday,
May 1, 2008 Sunday
May 4, 2008
Ascension
John 16: 24-33
The petals of the blossoms
begin to drop. The vision of loveliness falls away. Yet deep at the blossoms’
base, fruit is forming, seeds of a new life. It will be a while before they are
ripe. But they are there.
During the forty days of the
time after His Resurrection, Christ continued to walk with His disciples. They
could see Him in His otherwise transparent Resurrection body. Their deep love
for Him, aided by their sorrow and suffering at His death, had opened their
souls’ eye. Through seeing Him after His death, they knew that the human spirit
lives on after death.
But on the fortieth day, at
His Ascension, He dies to them again. Their spirit sight cannot follow Him as
He is elevated into yet another form, so their vision clouds over. They
experience once again losing Him, this time in an indescribable depth of
sorrow.
Sorrow and grief serve to
deepen the soul. During the ten days after His Ascension the disciples cocoon
themselves together in the upper room. They remember that He said, “Pray from
the heart and it will be given to
your heart.” Jn.
16:24.
So they pray. They go over all their memories of all they had experienced with
Him. They remembered that He said, “The hour is coming when I will speak to you, openly and unveiled, so
that you can grasp it in full knowing consciousness.” John
16:25.
Although their soul’s eye can
no longer see Him, their prayer and sorrow and memories are molding their
souls. Their interior awareness is deepening. “Do you now feel my power in your
heart?” He asks. “Take courage.” Jn 16:31, 33
Rilke captures some of the
mood of Ascension:
In
deep nights I dig for you like treasure.
For
all I have seen
that
clutters the surface of my world
is
poor and paltry substitute
for
the beauty of you
that
has not happened yet.
…Reaching,
these hands would pull you out of the sky
as if
you had shattered there,
…What
is this I feel falling now,
falling
on this parched earth,
softly,
like
a spring rain? [1]
Christ’s disciples are
gestating. A new capacity is forming within them. It will be a little while
until it makes itself known. But it is coming.
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