Two major themes dominate the seven weeks of the Easter Season: The Resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The two are very closely linked. We can conceive them as two successive missions. Jesus has come amongst us for a number of significant purposes: that we might know the Father through knowing Him; that He might die for us, taking our sins upon his shoulders, freeing us from sin and death and giving us eternal life; and that He might found a Church which would proclaim the Good News of his death and resurrection “to the ends of the earth.” Having accomplished this, his mission is over, and He ascends, returning to the Father.
As Jesus explains in John’s gospel, this is essential; his mission has to conclude before the next one, that of the Holy Spirit, can begin. As God-made-man, Jesus is bound by the laws of time and space; He lived in the Middle-East two thousand-odd years ago. For knowledge of Him to be spread throughout the world, an agent is required who is not bound by time and space, someone to make Jesus present at all times, in all places, that we might “see” Him, and in seeing Him, as Jesus explains to Philip, might “see the Father”.
So it is that, as Easter progresses, the theme of Resurrection slowly yields to that of the Holy Spirit. On the last day of the Easter season, the Day of Pentecost, we will see how the great event in which the Church is founded, happens. For now, it is important to note how Jesus prepares his disciples for the coming events in which they are to play so key a role. He confers upon them a number of powers: to baptise; to preach; to forgive sins; to proclaim with absolute certainty the truth about God who reveals himself to us; to interpret with certainty the teachings and meaning of Scripture. The forty days Jesus spends with his disciples after his resurrection from the dead are days of preparation and waiting; waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells his disciples to do nothing but wait for the coming of the Spirit, to remain in Jerusalem for the Spirit to descend, after which “…you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.”
As he had a plan for his disciples, so Jesus has a plan for each one of us. Each of us has a particular task that God wants us, and us alone, to accomplish. Blessed John Henry Newman put it beautifully in these words: God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Therefore, I will trust Him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.
The disciples of Jesus waited patiently for the coming of the Holy Spirit. When He descended, they understood God’s calling, and went down that path, to quote GK Chesterton, like a thunderbolt, never pausing or hesitating, no matter to what God called them. We, too, must “wait patiently for him,” trusting and believing that he has a task for us. And when that call comes, in the words of the old hymn, “let us, like them, without a word, rise up and follow Him.”
Fr. Phillip
