Ascension
John 16:22-33
"So you have to suffer
pain now. But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with
joy, and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in
my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart that your joy
may be fulfilled.
Stephen B. Whately
"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."
Ascension
Sunday, May 16, 2021
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.
Stephen B. Whately
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 prayers 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 something of the mood
of Ascension:
In deep nights I dig for you like treasure.
Laudario of Sant'Agnese
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?*
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.
* Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours,
Barrows and Macy, p. 124.
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