THE DARKNESS DEEPENS

A MESSAGE FOR THE 4th SUNDAY AFTER EASTER

Today is the Fourth Sunday after Easter.  Four Sundays already since Our Lord’s glorious Resurrection from the dead, and only a week and a half to go before his equally glorious Ascension into heaven.  Not long now before Our Lord leaves this world to go back to his Father.  These are the twilight times, the last golden days of Our Lord’s earthly visitation, when the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary, the Divine Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us.  In today’s Gospel he prepares his apostles for his departure, his return to his Father in heaven.  They know it is getting late and that he cannot stay with them much longer.  They are saddened by their master’s imminent departure, and seek to cling to him, like a little boy whose mother has to leave him for a while.  “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.”  The darkness gathers, and if we are well attuned to the Church’s liturgy, we too will feel that twinge of sadness, that sense of imminent loss.

But make no mistake.  This is no death watch.  Christ has died already, and—“on the third day he rose again from the dead.”  And so he consoles his disciples that this next departure will not be one of sorrow, but that he will rise in glory to the joyful sound of the trumpet.  He consoles them that unless he depart from this world and return to heaven, they will not be able to receive the Holy Ghost:  “It is expedient for you that I go away,” he says.  “For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”  The disciples had no idea what Our Lord was talking about.  Who was this “Comforter” who would come unto them after Our Lord had left them?  They did not yet understand that Christ spoke about the coming of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, that the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity would descend upon them with his sevenfold gifts.

For us today who do understand our Lord’s words, we can take comfort not only in the presence of the Holy Ghost, ever present in those who remain in the state of grace, but also in the presence of our Lord himself in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  In Catholic churches throughout the world, where the true Mass is still offered, we may be assured of the Real Presence in the tabernacle, on our altars at Mass, and in our very soul and body at Holy Communion.  And as we look back in nostalgia at the last days of Christ on earth before his Ascension, we may know in our hearts and by our faith that even as he rises up into the clouds of heaven, he abides with us still.