Saturday, May 8, 2010

Today’s text

John 14:28-29

You heard me say: I am going away and shall return. If you loved me you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you this now, before it happens, so that when it does happen you may believe.

Reflection

Your friends hear you, Jesus. But they hear only that you are going away, and sadness with fear sinks their souls.

‘Don’t go,’ their hearts immediately cry. They can’t help it. The reaction is involuntary not chosen. They know only the sadness immense loss. ‘Don’t go,’ that is the entire awareness of their souls.

‘Don’t go. We have barely come to know you. Only now have we begun to know how you change us. We are more alive when you are here. The air is warmer and clearer. We feel lighter, safer and happier. Our hearts are secure in your nearness. We are less alive, no; we don’t really live without you.’

But the cry is not theirs. It is mine. I understand them completely. My soul languishes in sadness and distraction of its own making and confusion when I don’t feel you near.

I fall into self-preoccupation, consumed with my failure to live a truly human life; a life lived in joy, aware of its purpose, filled with the energy of eternity which is that glistening love with which you fill me in those times when I am most aware of your presence.

So don’t go, Jesus. When I don’t sense you near my life is but a half-life, a shadow life in which the light of your face fails to shine through the gray mask of my melancholy.

But you go, and you go in order to return. You come back to me again and again, appearing with the full gifts of the Father’s great and invincible heart to light my soul with joy. I know that you go to enter the fullness of the One who is Fullness of life and joy. You go so that you may pour the nectar of this living delight into souls who run dry.

So pour your life onto the dry dust of this soul that I may live as fully as you, brimming with a joy born not in pleasant moments but in the deep reaches of the divine heart.

Then I shall be alive, and all the death that clings shall be washed away.

Pr. David L. Miller