For Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter
This
is the last day of getting ready in worship and prayer before we mark
Pentecost, which means fiftieth, as in the fiftieth day of Christ’s resurrection.
The
Mass brings us in today’s readings to the end of the Acts of the Apostles and
the end of the holy Gospel according to John.
We
might ask if there is no more.
The
last words of today’s Gospel answer and beg the question:
There are also many other things that Jesus did,
but if these were to be described individually,
I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would
be written.
But
there is a book where the finger of God [see Lk. 11:20] wrote and still writes all the many
other things that Jesus did.
We
are each that book.
The
Holy Spirit, the finger of God, writes the deeds of Christ within us.
Christ
told us of this on the night before he freely went to die.
I have yet many things to say to you,
but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of truth comes,
he will guide you into all the truth;
for he will not speak on his own authority,
but whatever he hears he will speak,
and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
He will glorify me,
for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
All that the Father has is mine;
therefore I said that the Spirit will take what is mine
and declare it to you. [Jn.
16:12-15]
All
that the Father has belongs to Christ his Son.
All
of it the Spirit now writes upon us, within us, and through us.
The
eyes of faith can see and read the Word of God, the Son of God, whom the Spirit
now writes into us.
Faith
sees, recognizes, reads, and follows the Word, the Son of God.
Today
in the Gospel, Christ commanded Peter to use and obey the eyes of faith: YOU FOLLOW ME.
The
Spirit gives us the wherewithal to see, know, heed, and FOLLOW the Son of God whom
the Spirit makes present within our being.
The
strength from the Spirit made Peter fit to give glory to God by dying for the
name of Christ.
This
strength made the beloved disciple fit to abide ever faithful to the Son of
God.
Here
in the Eucharist, we make known, offer, and take the Son of God in his real
Body and Blood— whose presence is made real by the work of the Spirit.
Our
faith is a power the Spirit gives us.
It
opens our eyes to see and know in the Body and Blood of Christ all the things
Christ has done that the whole world cannot contain.
The
whole world cannot contain what Christ does in his Eucharist because the world
comes to an end in the Eucharist.
In
the bread and wine we bring to the altar, the ordinary world comes to an end in
the Eucharist.
In
the Eucharist the ordinary world is gone.
There
is only the incarnate, risen, and ascended Son of God whose Body and Blood are
already the beginning of the new heavens and the new earth.
In
the might of the Holy Spirit, Christ was born and lived.
In
the might of the Spirit, he died and rose.
In
the might of the Spirit, he will come again.
Turn.
Love. Repeat.
