Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 29
Fourth Sunday After Easter.
Leave-taking.
"I go to Him that sent Me, and none of you asketh Me: Whither goest Thou?" — John xvi. 5.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : Occasion of discourse and difficulty of passage.
I. Partings: I. In song and story. 2. Christ's love for Apostles. 3. Three steps to Father.
II. Silence: 1. Joy and sorrow. 2. Bitter and sweet. 3. Bitter often more expedient.
III. Result: 1. Paraclete. 2. Peace. 3. Convicts of sin, justice, judgment.
Per.: 1. Pilgrims. 2. Whither goest thou? 3. From sin to justice and favorable judgment.
SERMON.
Brethren, the words I have read to you are an extract from Our Lord's last discourse to His disciples. Seated with them at table towards the close of the Last Supper, slowly and sorrowfully He began to tell them of His approaching departure. Of all His recorded utterances, this is the most sublime and, consequently, the most difficult to understand — so difficult, indeed, that the disciples hearing Him, said one to another: " What is this He saith to us? A little while and you shall not see Me, and again, a little while and you shall see Me, because I go to the Father. What is this He saith? for we know not what He speaketh." As I read the Gospel, I could well imagine you confronted with the same difficulty, asking the same questions. Let me try to explain.
The parting of relatives, of friends, is one of life's vicissitudes which, most of all, appeals to human sympathy, and evokes the nobler qualities of our inner nature. No other tableau, no other scene enacted on life's stage so entirely absorbs the actors and so deeply moves the spectators. It may be the death-bed scene, the parting of the living from the dying; or by the graveside, the last sight of the dead. It may be the heartbroken wife or mother's good-bye to the criminal on his way to imprisonment, or the gallows. It may be the young soldier patriot's hurried farewell to wife and little ones, as he answers his country's call. Whichever it be, it is sure to be inexpressibly solemn and touching. The poet Homer makes such a scene — the parting of Hector and Andromache — the subject of his most famous passage — while, in the Bible, who does not love to turn to the book of Samuel and ponder over the parting of David and Jonathan! Who does not understand the evangelist's silence regarding the first parting of Jesus and Mary! Because, namely, he was loth to intrude on such a sacred scene and words were inadequate to describe it. David loved Jonathan as his own soul, and their parting was like tearing the soul from his body; but Our Lord loved His twelve Apostles each better than His soul — He lived twelve lives in them and He died twelve deaths when they parted. You remember that passage of the Gospel where, pointing to His Apostles, He says: " These are My Mother and My brethren and My all." His love for them, therefore, must have been an intensified mixture of the love of a boy for his mother; of a brother for his sister; of a husband for his wife; of a lover for his beloved; of a friend, for his friend; and hence, at parting from them, His heart must have been transfixed with every species of sorrow that has ever torn a human breast. But though, occasionally, the pent-up sorrow of His heart betrays itself in the melancholy tenor of His words, yet is He unwilling that there Should be anything morose or selfish in His demeanor. Having loved His own from the beginning, He loved them and was their cheerful comforter to the end. On the eve of leave-taking, when hearts are laden with sorrow, love is apt to prompt both those that are to go and those that are to stay, to comfort each other by a forced gayety and to ignoreas long as possible the inevitable moment of parting. Thus, too, out of His tender solicitude for His Apostles Our Lord entered into the spirit of the occasion, feasted with them, and joined in their hymn of thanksgiving. But soon a silence fell upon them all, and each felt that the unhappy moment had come. Our Lord evidently paused a moment for some one else to break the silence, but no one venturing, He was forced to begin. " I go," He says, " to Him that sent Me, and none of you asketh Me, whither goest Thou? " The Apostles might well have reminded Him that on a former occasion He had said: " I am in the Father and the Father in Me; the Father and I are one," and they might reasonably have asked Him how, being one with the Father, He could say now: " I have come out from the Father and come into the world; again, I leave the world and I go to the Father." It will not do to say that Christ, by reason of the human nature He had assumed, could go to the Father, for He took His human nature so intimately as to become one with Himself, so that He can say of it: " I, and the Father, and this My human nature are one." " To leave the world and go to the Father," has a deeper meaning than that. In Holy Writ the word "world" is used sometimes in a good, sometimes in a bad sense. The good world are all created things of which we read that: " God saw all things that He had made, and they were very good." The bad world are sinners, of whom Our Lord says: €t These My disciples are not of this world even as I am not of this world." For, here below, there are two elements, the rational and the material — the rational of the heavens, heavenly; and the material of the earth, earthly; the rational servants of Christ ordering themselves and all things to God; and irrational sinners who give to the earth their body and mind, heart and soul. Now, were it not for Christ's Redemption, we should all be part of the evil world, but by His grace we leave it and approach God. Now, this approach is accomplished by three steps, prefigured in Jacob's ladder. The first step is from sin to grace by the acquisition of faith, hope and charity; and the second step, from grace to glory, when faith is lost in the vision of God; when hope becomes possession and charity alone remains. These two steps, by which we leave the world and go to the Father, are peculiar to the souls of mortal men, but the third is peculiar to Christ, viz., to leave the world with a soul and a glorified body, purged of all its earthly conditions. This then was Christ's meaning when He said: "I go to Him that sent Me." The body of Christ was to give the final proof that He was God and had gone to the Father. "When," says Our Lord, " when you shall have raised up the Son of man, then shall you know that I am God." His being raised up at His death on the cross, His rising from the tomb and His glorious Ascension, are each and all a series of corporal, visible proofs that He was God and went to the Father. That is why, at His death, the centurion said: "Verily this man was the Son of God." That is why at His Resurrection Thomas was convinced and said: " My Lord and my God." That is why the Apostles, after witnessing His Ascension cried out: " Verily,, Jesus Christ is in the glory of God His Father."
" I go to Him that sent Me and none of you asketh Me, whither goest Thou." When Our Lord, that same night, had first intimated His departure from them Peter had asked: " Lord, whither goest Thou?" And Thomas demanded: "Lord, show us the way that we may follow Thee." But after they have learned He is going to suffering and to death; after He had said: "The time cometh when whosoever killeth you will think he doeth a service to God," they no longer demand: " Lord, whither goest Thou?" they are no longer eager to follow Him, " For," He adds, " because I have spoken these things to you sorrow hath filled your heart." Such, Brethren, is the nature of the human heart — wide enough to entertain almost infinite joy, and again so small as to be filled by one drop of adversity. Such is the nature of human gratitude — a life-long kindness is soon forgotten at the first favor denied. Our hearts are like the flowers of springtime — under the genial sunshine of prosperity, they spread out to their fullest extent, but they quickly close up in the darkness of suffering and sorrow. And so with the Apostles — sorrow filled their hearts when they learned their future was to be one, not of joy but of sadness; not of earthly greatness but of humiliation and death. Notice that though it pained Our Lord to cause them pain, still, He did not shrink from His purpose and His duty. True, He coats the bitter pill of separation with the sweet assurance of ultimate return, saying: " A little while and you shall not see Me, and again, a little while and you shall see Me; for I will see you again and your hearts shall rejoice and your joy no man shall take from you." Still, the love of Our Lord being of the true kind, He fears not to mingle in their draught the useful with the sweet. Many a father and mother who think they fondly love their children, in reality hate them, by acceding to all their desires, humoring their every whim, and encouraging them in habits that must ultimately accomplish their ruin. Many a son or daughter, called by God to a higher life in religion, refuses, through false love of home or parents, to follow the call, lest, forsooth, sorrow should fill their hearts. Many a person allows his or her friends to go from bad to worse rather than risk offending them by a timely warning or a gentle reproof. These are cases where duty is to be done at any sacrifice, and duty once done, rest assured good will follow, and your sorrow be turned into joy. The Apostles' love for Christ, because imperfect, clung to the present good of His presence among them; but Christ's love for them, being perfect, looked rather to what good the future held in store. " It is expedient," He says, " that I go, for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go I will send Him to you." How often we see this illustrated in every-day life! There is, for example, in the family an infant, a boy or girl, a young man or woman — the idol of the family, one of God's living saints; too good, no doubt, for this world, so that the hand of death descends on him and God claims him for His own. In our short-sighted selfishness we wail and lament, but if our love were of the true kind we would look across time into eternity and hear the beloved voice assure us: " It is expedient, not only for myself but for you, that I go." For very often in that family is a careless Christian, a careless Catholic, whose soul, by affliction, is brought back to God; whose intercessor before God that saintly relative becomes; to whom that blessed soul may justly say: " It is expedient for you that I go, for if I go not, the grace of God will not come to you, but if I go I will send it to you." The Apostles must have realized this, if not then and there, at least soon afterwards, for St. Luke tells us that after witnessing the Ascension, they went back into Jerusalem with great joy. They knew that at Adam's fall hostilities had been declared between earth and heaven, and that the war then begun could never be amicably settled until man had been justly punished for his rebellion, until he had conquered God's enemies with whom he had allied himself, and sent to heaven a man as hostage and messenger of peace. All this Christ accomplished, satisfying for man's sin by His Passion and death, leading captivity captive by His victory over sin and death at His Resurrection, and carrying with Him, in His Ascension, Humanity to the Father from whom it had been estranged so long. Then, and only then, was the Spirit of God, the Paraclete, sent down and diffused in the hearts of men. As the moisture must first ascend heavenward before the refreshing showers descend, so, not until after the Ascension of Our Lord, could the Holy Ghost come to renew the face of the earth. This promise to send the Holy Spirit was that final proof of Christ's paternal solicitude for His little family — " When I go to the Father," He says, " I will not leave you orphans, but I will send the Paraclete to comfort and strengthen, to guide and protect you, until My second coming." As on a previous occasion Christ reserved the better wine for the end of the feast, so now, His final gift to man, the Holy Ghost, is the most precious of all. At creation He gave the world and the fulness thereof; by His incarnation He gave Himself, but only for a time; but now He gives the Holy Ghost to be ours for all time. Nay, the mission of the Holy Spirit is to the virtuous and wicked1 alike — to teach the virtuous all truth and so lead them after Christ through worldly afflictions, through death, to the throne of the Father; to warn sinners that a like judgment awaits them as their prince, the devil, has already received; to convince them of Christ's righteousness, forasmuch as the life-long tendency and final destination of His followers, as of Himself, is to go to the Father; and to convict them of sin, because with all the evidences and effects of Christianity before them they still refuse to believe. For whatever of good is in the world is all the work of the Holy Ghost. Every saintly soul, every chaste nun, every devoted priest; every good thought conceived, word spoken, or act done; every affliction cheerfully borne, every suffering brother relieved; every hospital, asylum, and charitable institution in the land; every death-bed sanctified, every soul saved; the peace of individuals, families, and nations; in short, everything noble which the love of God or one's neighbor can evoke from the human heart — all are effects of Christianity, the fruits of the Holy Ghost. And if blessed are they who have not seen and have believed; if less blessed are they who, having seen, believed; surely, cursed are they who, though they have seen the marvellous works of Christ and the Holy Spirit, still refuse to believe.
Brethren, whether we will it or not, of each of us it is true that we go to Him that sent us, but too rarely alas! do we stop to consider and ask ourselves that all-important question: "Whither goest thou?" Yet our time is coming. A little while and the world shall see us, and again a little while and the world shall not see us, and well will it be for us then if we shall have gone to the Father. Let us keep our eyes ever raised to this, our sublime destiny, as the mariner to his guiding star. Let it be our consolation amid the sorrows and ills of life that we are ultimately to go to Him that sent us, to the Father. May the Spirit of God, when He comes at this Pentecostal season, find no sin in us of which to convict us. May our last step toward the Father, our death, be such that a favorable judgment may follow. May we all our lives so unremittingly seek the justice of God that in the life to come we may attain the kingdom of heaven.