Cloudy Farewells

In this episode, I reflect on the profound experience of saying goodbye, drawing from personal encounters and the emotional weight of farewells. I discuss Jesus’ ascension and the significant transition his disciples faced. Jesus’ departure was not just an exit but a preparation for the promised Holy Spirit. As we approach Pentecost, I encourage us to embrace this time of longing and preparation. Through prayer and community, we open our hearts to God’s love, acknowledging our need for divine assistance. Let us ready ourselves for the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, embodying our mission as a church.

00:00:00 What do you like at saying goodbye to someone? I think it’s kind of an interesting people watching skill. You know, when you go to the airport lounge and you’re seeing people just making their their final farewells, parents saying goodbye to the teenager who’s heading off for their backpacking trip overseas. Or you see it in a very different way. I was called last night to the hospital, to the ICU, a lady that was now in her final stages of life, and the children and family were gathering around and arriving. And so all of the the tearful greetings of each other and and then saying goodbye to mum. It’s an interesting thing just to experience that. And sometimes people are really good at saying goodbye. Other times they’re not the person is I got quite close to over the last couple of years, and they just let me know when I was, I was suggesting, let’s meet up for a coffee or something. And they’re like, oh, actually, we left the parish last month and I’m just like, what? And they said, yeah, we’re not good at saying goodbye.

00:01:13 So we just kind of left. I’m like, okay, that’s one way to do it. I think Jesus has kind of enacted the the ultimate exit stage left strategy by the employing of this cloud that is able to just descend and to take him away from the disciples eyes. I’m not suggesting that Jesus isn’t that good at the psychology of of farewell, but there is this this sense of this moment in the life of the church when Jesus needs to return to the father, not because that’s a better place, but as he’s promised and right through that Last Supper discourse, when we read the chapters 14, 15, 16, especially of John’s Gospel, we get this very strong sense of Jesus saying, look, it’s necessary that all these things will happen. All these things need to unfold, but you won’t be left alone. I’m going to send you the most amazing gift that anyone could ever imagine. That you will be clothed with power from on high. We hear in the gospel today that we won’t experience this sense of longing, of of being confused or being tossed about on the winds and waves.

00:02:40 We will have this ability to know who we are, because Jesus will send us this gift of the Holy Spirit. And that’s the longing that we need to have, that longing that we need to to make sense of. And the disciples also needed to have that time of transition. And so when Jesus ascended to the father on this day, and it’s interesting that in the gospel that we just heard, which was written by the same author, Luke, we call him at the as the first reading from the acts of the apostles. It seems that the moment of the Ascension happens on Easter Sunday. Like the disciples have made their way to Emmaus, and they’ve all gathered back to in the evening, and then it seems to be that same day that they go out on to, Jesus makes his his big exit stage left on Easter. So the fact that the church moved this feast day from Ascension Thursday to Ascension Sunday shouldn’t disturb us too much. You know, 40 is one of those numbers that doesn’t signify an exact counting of days on the calendar.

00:03:54 But this sense of just a long period of time, a sufficient period of time, a period of testing, a period of trial, a period of transition, a time when we begin to to move from one space into another. But then, as Jesus is making his ascent, as he’s leaving physically for the last time, from that experience with the disciples, he wants them to prepare. He calls to them to say, this is what you now need to do. Don’t go away. Just stay in Jerusalem. And that’s wonderful that the last line of the Gospel of Luke that we read from tonight takes us back to the very beginning. The Gospel of Luke begins and ends with prayer in the temple. The community is always formed and shaped by the way that we meet together, the way that we pray, the way that we open our hearts to receive that power. We’re shaped and formed by our intentions and by our desires. If we long for the gift of the Holy Spirit, then we will receive it.

00:05:07 But we have to prepare for that. We have to make sense of what is actually happening in our lives. We need to realize the frailty that we experience. We need to be aware of the poverty that we have. That we can’t do this alone. That we can’t be the church unless we be clothed with power from on high. We can’t be the people that God has called us to be, unless we stop trying all of these things ourselves and open ourselves instead to this power, to this gift of love. This ultimate gift of being clothed with the Holy Spirit. And so we move into this period, which is the first time of the novena. The first experience of the church gathering in prayer. To pray for that longing. To pray that we might be shaped and formed by His Word. That our hearts might again burn within us, as the Word of God is spoken within us, that we might again be the missionary presence to go and to share that love that the father has poured out upon us with those around us.

00:06:19 And all of that only happens to the extent that we prepare, to the extent that we long to the extent that we open ourselves to the gift of the Holy Spirit. So the challenge that we face in this final week of Easter is to indeed be ready for the gift of the Holy Spirit to not just go, oh well, it’s just another feast, another time of Pentecost, another one of those times when we celebrate the memory of the church and what happened way back then. Pentecost is not just a historical reality. It’s something that can continue to be at the very centre of our experience as Christians. Pentecost is not just something that happened to that group of people, but it’s something that we can also experience through that gift and through that grace. Because indeed, we people that open ourselves to pray with such longing and desire, that recognize our poverty, that recognize our inability to believe by ourselves and long for that transformation. Long for that gift of the Holy Spirit. Long to receive prayer, to have the power of the Holy Spirit being unleashed within our lives.

00:07:31 Let’s indeed spend this week spending their time in prayer. Opening our hearts to God, recognizing his desire to serve us, to love us, and to call us into freedom and into life with His Church and with his community, so that we can be the church that shares that love with the world.