+In the Name…
Jesus said, “I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15).
On Thursday, western Christianity celebrated the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ into heaven. The Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, the Eternal Word of God who “was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made Man,” ascended into heaven in His glorified resurrection body and now “sitteth on the right hand of the Father.”
Jesus Christ who lived in the world for 30 or so years has ascended into heaven – out of the world. But before He ascended promised, “I will be with you always, to the close of the age.”
He had fulfilled His mission on earth, and now it was time for His return to Heaven from whence He had come; but He returns as the Incarnate Son of God, not just as the Son of God. Our humanity is taken to heaven as the first fruit of man’s redemption and a foretaste of what is to be the fulfillment of men and women who are in Christ.
One more time today for us to be back to Maundy Thursday to hear Jesus pray to the Father the day before the Crucifixion, three days before the Resurrection, and forty days before the Ascension for the disciples that “thou shouldst not take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one.”
Jesus knew in His divine nature that He would rise and ascend from earth to heaven. He prays for His disciples to be firmly rooted in the world, but not of the world to carry forth the Good News of Life and Redemption which He will accomplish in His Death and Resurrection.
Jesus’ desire for His Apostles and disciples was that as the world experienced the works of God in the earthly realm in Him sensorally by sound, sight, smell, taste, and touch, the Apostles and disciples would continue that reality of that type of presence of God on earth by the power of the Holy Spirit.
They were to embody the presence of Christ in their bodies, and in and through the expression of their bodies in their ministries in His Name. The Incarnation, the enfleshment of God, was to continue on- in and through them, and in and through the Apostles who would succeed them throughout the ages until Jesus comes again with power and great glory.
They were to be engaged with the world. They were to take on the world. They were to be light to the world. But in all such things, they were not to be of the world. St. Paul taught the Church in Rome, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:2). St. James wrote: “…whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
You see, there is a vast difference between being a friend of the world and living of the world, with praising God for the world He has created, and the manifold blessings we receive in the world from God – too many even to name! We should praise and thank God with the very best we can offer to Him, but with the realization (of what we’ve all known and experienced) that the creation is fallen, and (as St. Paul writes) suffers in “bondage to decay,” and “has been groaning in travail.” We know of or have known the affliction of physical disease and disaster, emotional depression and despair, and spiritual darkness and .
Who among us has not at some point said or felt, or knew someone who said or felt, “I can’t take it anymore. There is no hope. Nothing will ever change. What’s the use of living”? Whether it’s burnout in ministry, or seeing no signs of things being different, or being exhausted physically and emotionally, or just being ready for and desirous of the next life, many a person questions the present circumstances, and longs for release from the world as it is and what seems out of control in the world.
How well I remember old Alice Cummings, who lived all by herself in a huge house across the street from the Rosemont train station, which a few years after her death in 1992 was razed. She was old, tired, and lonely, and dependent upon others, and especially upon Bill Brack who once lived nearby on County Line Road, and who had taken on the ministry of providing and delivering Alice her supper every evening.
I’ll never forget the day that Bill Brack dropped dead with a heart attack on February 13, 1991 – both Ash Wednesday and my birthday that year. He was only 67 years old. I called Alice, after I spoke with the funeral home, to tell her of Bill’s sudden death. Her response was, “O God….,” and after a long pause asked in her inimical no-nonsense way: “And who’s going to bring me my supper?” After my lengthy pause at her question, I told her that Rita would bring Rita and I would bring her supper.
Bill was her basic hold on life; and in her final year of life, she would say to me when I took her Communion, “I wish that I would wake up dead!” I understood her feelings and desire, and assured her that I would pray that God would in His time grant her request, but emphasized that it was His time. She said, “I know, I know…”
St. Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth about what was going in his mind and spirit, and what he was sure was in the minds and spirits of the Christians in Corinth as obstacles and difficulties were faced:
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”
He intimates that there may be a high cost to the ministry as apostles and disciples of the Lord. He continues: “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed [a reference to martyrdom], we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling….we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body” (II Corinthians 4:8-10, and 5:1-2, 6-10).
Each day that God gives us is a day to serve Him, to love Him with all of one’s heart, mind, soul, and strength. There will be days of exhilaration, and days of fatigue, as it was for Jesus. We are to keep our hands to the plow and not look back. We are to press on toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We are, in the words of dear Bishop David Chislett of Australia, “to do our bit” – whatever that “bit’ is, and whether it be grand or mundane.
I read a few weeks ago from Michael O’Brien’s book Eclipse of the Sun – the section where the Archbishop was speaking on the phone to the young priest about claiming the Presence of Christ within. At one point of the same conversation, the Archbishop speaks to Father Ron of the value (but the unknown effect) of sacrifice in the service of the Lord:
He says, “We are all connected in the Body of Christ. Your scarf ices, my sacrifices, may be bringing about a tremendous good in the world, affecting the lives of countless people whom we may never meet in this life. What looks like darkness and pain to us may be, in fact, a source of light for others.”
We don’t know, and it is a good thing that we don’t know what the fruit of our labor, service, ministry, and good works is. If we did, it could well lead to pride, or lead us to decide that we’ve done enough, and that it is time for some well-deserved rest. Our common calling to do what the Lord calls us to do until He speaks and directs differently.
I conclude with a prayer that I have been using each morning for the past several years- the prayer written by St. Ignatius of Loyola, a prayer that states what apostleship and discipleship need to seek.
“Teach me, Good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that I do Thy holy Will, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Wouldn’t you agree that such a prayer says it so well, and deserves to be prayed by all of us?
+In the Name… |
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