Reflection for the Sixth Sunday of Easter 2010
8 May 2010

by Sheila Carroll, OSB

“If anyone loves me he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him." What he is really telling us is the richness of love and the only necessary virtue. Love is our goal as we go through the struggles of life and the struggle with myself to peel away the old self and emerge with the true self. I want to begin my reflection with a story. I really believe that John, especially, reminds us to love as Jesus loves. We are led by Jesus through John to right relationships. The richness of love deals with a continual reaching out in love to my sisters here and everywhere, and to the less fortunate, the cripples, the blind, the homeless, and the powerless. Being in touch with the poor has been important to me. For whom and for what are you willing to die? Jesus has shown us and knew that a little child could show us.

There’s a story about an eight year old boy whose sister was ill and needed a blood transfusion. They needed her type of blood. The mother’s blood was not of the type. She asked her son if he would be tested to see if he could give her blood. Without the blood, his sister would die. His blood matched. She asked him if he would give his blood to his sister and was sure it would be ,”Yes.” Instead, he looked at her seriously and asked if he could have overnight to think about it. His mother agreed . Early the next morning, he said that he would give his blood. The two were put in the same room. The nurse took his blood and he watched his blood drip through the IV and into his sister. The boy lay there in silence. When the doctor came in to see how they were doing, the boy opened his eyes and asked him, “Doctor, how soon now until I die.” This boy learned at eight what and who he was willing to die for.

As I reflected on the Gospel of John, this story of the little boy came to mind. This reading speaks of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. It gives us an assurance that not only will the Spirit be with us but also it is an assurance to the Apostles that He will be with them but in a different way. This they do not understand. My words tonight might seem to reflect that of the disciples. When we reach our limits, when our ordered world collapses, when we ask God for help and meet silence, we are entering the land of unknowing and God is there. As Augustine writes, “I sought you in all things outside; here you were within me all the time.”

This readings tonight lead me into mystery. I, who always look for answers, want to know the how and why, simply wait in what I call a “dark silence”. Let’s look at the Gospel reading. “You know him because he abides with you and he will be in you.” John places the emphasis not on intellectual comprehension or theological correctness but on mystical experience. Jesus is really telling his disciples that he is going away through death but he will remain alive for those who trust his words and make him the center of their lives. Jesus is really telling us that if we are in loving union with him there will really be no death, that such life cannot be touched by death. Mystical experience is an unmediated contact with God. Jesus is certainly demanding more than correct doctrine or right ritual when he says, “Those who love me will keep my word and my father will love them. We will come to them and make our home with them.” Keeping his word means to love as he loves.

Furthermore, Jesus taught a great deal about this but they really didn’t catch on to what he was saying. Jesus must think, “Should I draw a picture?” He tells them that the Holy Spirit will teach them everything and, yet, he must have muttered, “Good luck; I tried.” When John says that the Spirit will expand on the teaching of Jesus, he is really telling us that the Spirit will teach us how to experience Jesus in a world that is so different from the world that he knew but the Spirit is with us to guide us in this century.

Demetrius Dumm in his book, A Mystical Portrait of Jesus writes, "It is obvious that Jesus never knew experientially what being an old person would be like. Yet, there are many old people who want to experience old age in accordance with the wisdom of Jesus.” This is not by rational thought but on the deepest level of personal and mystical experience. This identity with Jesus will bring about a deep sense of confidence and peace. I want to close with Kurt Vonnegut’s novel called A Cat’s Cradle. In the novel he writes that God has just created Man. He writes, “Man blinked. ‘What is the purpose of all this?’ He asked politely. ‘Everything must have a purpose?’ asked God, ‘Certainly,’ said Man. ‘Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,’ and he went away.” A satire, it’s true. but, sometimes, it can reveal truth in a different way. We are in the 21st century and we are not real sure that we know what we thought we knew. Do we have to have a purpose? On a lighter note and, once again, on the theme of wisdom, a boy’s willingness to die and the voice of satire, I want to say that when the reliability of all we have constructed is brought into question, we enter mystery. Thomas Wolf looks beyond and writes:

"To lose the earth you know for greater knowing
to lose the life you have for greater life;
to leave the friends you loved for greater loving;
To find a land more kind than home,
more large than earth...
Whereon the pillars of this earth are founded,
toward which the consciousness of the earth is tending-
a wind is rising, and the river flows”

St. Benedict said that the only requirement for admission is that she be seeking the Lord. Not security, not status, not roles and titles, not habits, not a portfolio of answers, but simply seeking the Lord. Spiritual seeking will make her a perpetual and humble student instead of a contented careerist, a quester instead of a squatter, an always impatient, yearning and desirous lover. I will bet on such a spiritual seeker any day. We are on the real and only quest for peace.

© 2010 Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica
Atchison, Kansas