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| "Our Lord Jesus Christ," by J. Tissot. Brooklyn Museum / Public Domain. |
Come to me. Learn from me. Take my yoke.
For Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter
John 16:20-23
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep
and mourn,
while the world rejoices;
you will grieve, but your grief will
become joy.
When a woman is in labor, she is in
anguish because her hour has arrived;
but when she has given birth to a child,
she no longer remembers the pain because
of her joy
that a child has been born into the world.
So you also are now in anguish.
But I will see you again, and your hearts
will rejoice,
and no one will take your joy away from
you.
On that day you will not question me about
anything.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whatever you ask the Father in my name he
will give you.”
We
know and experience that there is real reason in the present world for travail
or labor, for sorrow and anguish.
Yet,
three times today in his Gospel, the Lord tells us that sorrow, labor and
anguish will turn into joy.
He
does not tell us to go out and look for sorrow and anguish.
However,
if the Spirit is to have room within us wherein to bring joy to birth, then we
must— through faith, prayer and worship— prepare a willing and tender hollow
within us that can accept sorrow, labor and anguish if and whenever they come.
In
the very same place where sorrow plunges its blade, there joy sinks its root.
The
human heart is both the field of sorrow and the seedbed of joy.
The
Lord says to us in his Gospel today:
So you also are now in
anguish.
But I will see you
again, and your hearts will rejoice....
We
must let the Spirit of God hollow out its place within us, so that the will of
God be done, so that his kingdom come to birth within us, so that we may be
ready for joy even now, joy in him, and so that we may be ready as well for the
day of Christ’s return.
We
have his promise in his Gospel today:
But I will
see you again, and your hearts will rejoice,
and no one
will take your joy away from you.
On
that day of joy, as he goes on to tell us, we shall have nothing further to ask
of him.
Even now, he approaches us in his Eucharist wherein he gives everything without being asked.
Turn. Love. Repeat.
