Letting Go

 

One of the most difficult things in life is saying goodbye to someone.  I am not necessarily talking about the final goodbye, although that is the most difficult of course.  I am talking about letting go of someone, so that the next chapter may unfold. 

Parents know this too well.  As a high school teacher, I get to speak to parents of graduating seniors.  As they watch their child walk across a stage at graduation, they are proud yet sad.  They  know their daughter or son will soon be leaving for college or whatever the next stage is.  They smile, but at the same time, they have a lump in their throats.  They know holding on is not possible or even if it was, it is not very healthy.  One must sometimes let go so that the next beautiful thing might occur.  Parents of high school graduates will hopefully see their child eventually succeed,  perhaps as a doctor, or as lawyer, or as a teacher, or whatever God has in store for them.  The emotional parent at the letting go of their child might anticipate the joy of one day being a grandparent, or perhaps see their son become a priest or religious brother or their daughter a religious sister.  None of it possible if they remain an underage child.

Perhaps this bittersweet moment is what the disciples were experiencing at the time of Jesus’ Ascension.   Depending on where you live, you celebrated the Ascension this past Thursday or this coming Sunday.  How difficult it must have been for those who had encountered the Risen Lord to now have to let him go.  They had experienced the desolation of the Crucifixion, and the tremendous joy of the Resurrection.  They road the rollercoaster of emotions that is so much a part of the human experience.  And now, a seemingly repeat of desolation.

The reality is that they needed to let Jesus go to the Father, so that they could experience him in an even deeper way.  He needed to return to the Father.  He needed to send the Holy Spirit. They and we were then meant to experience the desire to be with him for all eternity and the gift of his very existence to us in the reality of the Eucharist and in the reality of his Body, the Church.  What we would experience in these ways, in a very real and very spiritual way, would break the limitations of trying to hold on to him physically.

Letting go is not easy.  It is not meant to be easy.  Letting go creates an ache in the heart, but it creates a strong ache to experience what we let go in a more deeper way.  Jesus, the head, ascended to the Father.  The body aches to experience that divine presence, to go where the head went.  That desire is a desire that God has planted in our hearts from the very beginning of creation.  Our whole lives are meant to be a journey to satisfy that desire.  The fact that we can’t see God, although he has been revealed to us in the person of Jesus, creates in us a desire to be with him for all eternity.  Let us praise him during this time of the Ascension, for going to the Father, so we might deepen our desire for him.

-          The Servant