Sunday, April 28, 2024
The Written Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter
Dear Friends,
Jesus prepared His disciples for His departure into Heaven, and He tells us that He must leave us so that the Holy Ghost may come to us. We must not make the mistake of assuming that the presence of the Holy Ghost with Jesus is somehow incompatible. On the contrary, The Son and The Holy Ghost are One with the Father. The understanding appears to be that, because of our weakness, as long as Jesus shows Himself in bodily form to our senses, we cannot lift our hearts and minds to genuinely spiritual things.
We must advance from the physical, Human Person of God in Jesus Christ to the spiritual Person of God in the Holy Ghost. Our fallen human nature finds it difficult to believe, love, and obey the invisible God. Hence, God the Son became a Man so that we will have a physical/material God to follow. His presence among us gave us sufficient reason not to be led astray by the idols of Paganism. Jesus is the Living God, not a dead piece of carved wood or stone or a cast metal object. Neither is He a demonic deity seeking the destruction of humanity.
God has mercy on our physical natures by presenting Jesus in our same nature so that we can relate to Him and more easily believe in Him. As we saw with the Israelites in the desert, we want (need) a God that we can see. Our faith is based upon all that Jesus said and did in His human nature. Our greatest proof for any doctrine (teaching) is that Jesus said it. It is clear and unmistakable because He came to us in the material realm, and we have the recorded testimonies of those who saw and heard Him.
However, the material world that captivates our senses is an obstacle to our spiritual progress. As long as we focus all our attention on the human nature of Jesus, we lose sight of the fact of God’s Spiritual Nature. Jesus came so that we may believe, but He teaches us that we must overcome the limitations of our physical natures.
His departure from this world is just an extension of His teachings. To follow Him, we are to deny ourselves (our dependence on physical senses and pleasures) and embrace our cross (physical discomfort, pain, and even death) daily. To live eternally, we must pass through a temporal death. To live spiritually, we must physically die.
For the Apostles to advance in their spiritual life, Jesus needed to leave them. Their physical attachment to Him was an obstacle to their spiritual union with Him. It is like giving physical gifts to our loved ones to express our love for them or to increase their love for us. Sadly, too often, we find that we love the gift more than we love the giver of the gift. In the spiritual realm, we too frequently attach ourselves to God’s physical gifts rather than raise our hearts to love Him Who gave us all these things.
Jesus came to show us that we must love God more than the things He gives us. But even His physical presence with us is an obstacle for us. His departure is necessary so that the Holy Ghost may come to us, so that we may advance from the material to the spiritual – from the natural to the supernatural.
The growth and maturation of our spiritual life is straightforward. We begin by observing the material things around us and seeing that they are good and desirable. Then, we lift our hearts and minds higher to consider the One Who gave these things to us. Our affection is first given to the material and the natural, then it leaves behind the material and the natural to love and desire the immaterial and the supernatural.
When we find it difficult to let go of the physical things of this world, God often must forcibly take them away from us. He does this not because He hates us but because He loves us. It is for our own good that these must be given up or taken away. As much as a child may love and cling to his bottle, there must come a time when he sets it aside, or it is taken from him so that he may advance in life and be healthy. It is not pleasant to have to be the one to take away the physical things that our loved ones have become so deeply attached to, but it is a necessary thing that is compelled by love.
Progress and growth in the physical world is made by letting go of lesser things to make room for greater things. We put away the things of the child so that we may take up the things of men.
In the spiritual realm, we learn to let go of the things of this world to make room for the things of the next world. We set aside the natural and material things so that we can take up the supernatural and spiritual things of Heaven.
Jesus must go so that we can grow. Our physical and natural dependence on Him must become a spiritual and supernatural one.
May the Immaculate Heart of Mary inspire, guide, and protect us!
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