5/11/24: Tomorrow is Ascension Sunday, and in the Magnificat meditation for today, I found an interesting writing by a Dominican sister, Mary Jean Dorcy which I copied below, along with the Gospel reading for today. Having read the Gospel selection first, I found the problem that always occurs when I read this selection, actually, a problem and a promise that seem like the bottom and the top of one figure, call it “T” if you want a visual. If Jesus is who we Christians affirm that he is, that is, God incarnate, then what he says is! Whatever we ask the Father for in Jesus’ name, we will receive. Obviously we are not talking about dollars and cents here or Cadillacs and mansions. The context of the person asking should be clear. That is, the person asking ought to be inside the faith, in love with Jesus and thus asking from that perspective of love and humility. Suddenly, in a moment of clarity, I see that the problem is no longer a problem. As I said on another page, writing can be for me a means of discovery, an earnest desire to discover and communicate truth as I understand it.
That understanding then makes the promise sharper and clearer: that our joy may be complete. Martin Buber, I—Thou, introduced me to the idea that “real life is meeting.” That’s also a chapter title (I think) in C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. Frequently what we see here and now, in this life, to borrow Plato’s image, are images, shadows on the wall of the cave. Saint Paul says a similar thing, as everyone used to know, regardless of whether they believed it. Now we see through a glass darkly, or in a mirror dimly, then face to face. The point is that Heaven is about real meeting, real seeing. C. S. Lewis wrote somewhere, maybe in Letters to Malcolm, chiefly about prayer, that “Joy is the serious business of Heaven.” Well, the bottom and the top, no problem, two promises, one reality. Suddenly, Mrs. Turin’s image of all the souls on the road up to Heaven, singing Hallelujah came to mind and I smiled.
Now for the Sister’s meditation. First, as I was lying in bed looking out my window at the solitary view, trees—a redbud, a dog wood, several maples and several oaks—it occurred to me that a filmmaker could do a seasonal view of the trees—springtime budding and then blooming, becoming summer’s lush green foliage, leaves everywhere on all the trees, then fall’s colorful variety, leading to the “bare ruined choirs” of winter. It strikes me that is a good image for the life I was given too, with the onset of winter well underway. What the good Sister said about the nature of Saturday led me to see another perspective on time and stages.
The first stage occurs with Good Friday and the meeting of the crucified Christ. That image produces in me an experience of horror. This suffering should not be, not for any man, not for this man especiality. Horror, sorrow, humility. In a sense, the darkness of Holy Saturday is where we live. In the liturgical year, three days, Good Friday to Easter Sunday, but the Saturday before the Ascension, is the last of another series of 40 days this time, and the idea of darkness bound with hope, that His going means that a world-changing transformation is coming. After Ascension is Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, the bringer of joy. In a sense then I find that I have a kind of double vision—Heaven is unfolding before us, but Heaven is not yet. Jesus calls it the kingdom. We have then hope in the darkness when we experience the absence and long for the coming, the return; and we have the joy of the resurrection and the faith given to us by the descent of the Holy Spirit who is love with knowledge and understanding. Faith, Hope, Love, these three: there should be no such thing as a morose Christian, a painful one, certainly, but not morose, not grumbling like the Israelites in the desert and even in the promised land, for joy is the serious business of Heaven, the Kingdom.
A reading from
the holy Gospel according to John 16:23b-28
Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.
“I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father. On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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Before the meditation we perhaps need only to be reminded of the heart of Mary’s faith, which ought also to be the heart of any Christian’s faith: “Let it be to me according to thy word.” That, along with Saint Thomas’s “My Lord, my God.”
Believing That Our Joy Will Be Complete
Since the earliest years of the Church, Saturday has been kept as a day especially dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. It was on the Sabbath that Jesus lay in the tomb, his followers scattered and terrorized and his cause, according to all the evidence, a failure. What the rest of Christ’s dear ones were doing on that Saturday we do not know, but we know what Mary did: She waited, prayed, and hoped. Her faith did not falter on that dark day and night of waiting, and these many years later we honor that faith….
[We] are looking back to a valiant woman who watched the dark come down over all the world’s hopes at Calvary; a woman who waited, keeping in mind all these things, pondering them in her heart (Lk 2:19), knowing that God had not deserted her, no matter what the evidence, and that there would be an Easter morning. Most of us will hope as long as there is life. Mary hoped even beyond this. The very picture of a brave woman defying death itself with hope should change our whole perspective toward death for ourselves and for our dear ones. Mary watching through the night had faith enough to see beyond the great stone that was rolled across the tomb, and to believe that, as Christ had said, he would rise again…. We see now how fitting it is that God’s Mother waited through a dark night to teach us patience in waiting.
Our Lady of Faith, Mother of all the lonely and the frightened of all the ages, help us to keep faith through the long days and the longer nights: faith in God, who does not desert us, who is with us all days, even unto the consummation of the world (Mt 28:20). Mother of all, you whose faith did not falter because your love was so great, make our hearts large, that God may fill them with his love forever.
Sister Mary Jean Dorcy, o.p.
Sister Mary Jean († 1988) was a Dominican sister and a prolific author and illustrator, especially of children’s literature. / From The Carrying of the Cross: Thoughts for Women on the Passion of Christ. Copyright © 1959, St. Anthony Guild Press, Paterson, NJ. All rights reserved.
