Meditation

Today, we are presented with a deeper understanding of the reality of the Ascension of the Lord. In the reading from the Gospel of John on Easter Sunday, Mary of Magdala is told not to cling to the Lord because “I have not yet ascended to the Father” (Jn 20, 17). In today's Gospel Jesus notes that the disciples are overcome: “because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts.
 

Today in the Gospel, Jesus announces and promises the coming of the Holy Spirit: "When the Paraclete comes…that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me" (Jn 15, 26). "Paraclete" literally means "the one who is called near to one", and is usually translated as "Comforter". 
 

Today, Jesus —as He previously did with his disciples— is leaving us. He is going back to the Father to be glorified. This seemed to sadden his disciples who were always looking at him with that physical, human gaze, that only believes in, accepts and clings to whatever can be seen and touched.
 

This is why Jesus is the light of men, the light that illuminates the world's darkness. Saint John Paul II exhorted us: “so that this light makes us strong and capable to accept and love the entire Truth of Christ, and love it even more when opposed by our world.”
 

Today, our Lord exhorts us to fraternal love: “love one another as I love you.” (Jn 15, 12), that is to say, as you have seen me loving and you will still see me love. Jesus speaks to you as a friend, for He has told you that his Father calls you, that He wants you to become an apostle, and that He expects you to bear fruit, a fruit that is manifested through love. 

Today, we hear again the intimate confidence Jesus made last Holy Thursday: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you” (Jn 15, 9). The Father's love for the Son is immense, tender, dear. We can read it in the Book of Proverbs, when He affirms that long before initiating his deeds “then was I beside him as artisan; I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while” (Pr 8, 30). 
 

Today, once more, we may see Jesus surrounded by the Apostles in an atmosphere of special intimacy. He is giving them what we could consider as his final recommendations: what is normally said in the last moment, in the last farewell; that which has an special force, as if it would be the last will.
 

Today, Jesus speaks to us indirectly of the cross: He will give us the peace, but at the cost of his painful “departure” of this world. Today, we read those words He said before the sacrifice on the Cross but that were written after his Resurrection. With his death on the Cross, He defeats both death and fear. 
 

Jesus assures us He will be present in us in the divine intimacy of the soul through grace. Thus, we Christians are no longer orphans. He loves us so much that, though He does not need us, He does not want to be without us.
 

In this invitation that Jesus makes to us, to go to the Father through Him, with Him, and in Him, His most intimate desire and His deepest mission are revealed: " He who for our sake became like us in order to make us his brothers, now presents to his true Father his own humanity in order to draw all his kindred up after him " (St. Gregory of Nyssa).
 

—The humble and faithful faith in Jesus, our choice to follow and obey Him, day after day, connects us mysteriously but truly with the very mystery of God, while making us recipients of all the riches of His kindness and mercy. This faith lets the Father execute, through us, the work of grace He began in His Son: “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do” (Jn 14, 12).
 

Today, on this Friday 4th of Easter, Jesus invites us to stay calm. Serenity and joy flow smoothly like a river of peace from his resurrected Heart towards ours, dazed and restless, so often shaken by an activity as hectic as it is futile.
 

Today, as with those movies that at the beginning take us back in time, our liturgy remembers a passage that belongs to the Holy Thursday: Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. Thus, this gesture —read from the Easter perspective— recovers a perennial validity.
 

Today, Jesus cries out; He cries out just as someone who is saying words everybody should clearly listen to. His clamor synthesizes his saving mission, as He has come “to save the world” (Jn 12, 47), but not on his own but in the name of “Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak” (Jn 12, 49).
 

Only through Faith man is able to recognize Jesus Christ as the Son of God. When The Holy Father John Paul II addressed the young people on occasion of the 15th World Youth Day at Tor Vergata, in the year 2000, he spoke about the “school of faith”. To the question “Who do the crowds say that I am?” 
 

Through the shepherds, Christ gives His Word, spreads out His divine Grace with the sacraments and steers His flock towards the Kingdom: He offers himself as our nourishment in the sacrament of the Eucharist, imparts God's Word and Magisterial teachings, and caringly leads his People.

Today, in the Gospel, Jesus uses two images referring to himself: He is the shepherd. And He is the gate. Jesus is the good shepherd who knows the sheep. "He calls his own sheep by name" (Jn 10, 3). For Jesus, each one of us is not a number; He has personal contact with each one of us. The Gospel is not just a doctrine: it is the personal attachment of Jesus to us.
 

His language is too hard for some, too incomprehensible for their mentality, closed to the Lord's saving Word; St. John says, somewhat sadly, that “As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer walked with him” (Jn 6, 66).
 

Today, Jesus makes three key avowals, such as: that we are to eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood; that if we do not take the Holy Communion we cannot have life; and that this life is the eternal life and the condition for resurrection (cf. Jn 6,53-58). There is nothing in the Gospel so clear, so emphatic and so definite as these statements of Jesus.
 

The living bread is Jesus. It is not nourishment we assimilate for us but that assimilates us. It makes us feel hungry for God, thirsty for listening to his Word, which is, our heart's rejoicing and joy. The Eucharist is an anticipation of the heavenly glory: “We divide the bread, the medicine of immortality, the antidote we take in order not to die but to live forever in Jesus Christ”...
 

These words of Christ spur us to come to him daily in Mass. This is the easiest thing in the world: simply to turn up at Mass, pray and then receive his Body. Once we do this, we not only possess this new life, but we radiate it to others. 

Today, there is much to say about why the word of the Gospel does not echo with strength and conviction; why we Christians keep a hesitant silence regarding what we believe in, in spite of the so-called “new evangelization”. Each one will make his or her own analysis about this and will come up with their own particular version.
 

Today, after the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, the people went looking for Jesus as far as Capernaum. Then as now, people are seeking the divine. Isn't the proliferation of religious sects and esotericism proof of this thirst for all things divine?
 

The Gospel proclaimed in the midst of Sunday assemblies is always the angelic announcement of a clarity directed at minds and hearts slow to believe (cf. Lk 24, 25), and for this reason, it is gentle, not explosive, since otherwise, it would blind us instead of illuminating us. 

Before our personal frailness to successfully carry out the missions the Lord has asked us to do (a vocation, an apostolic project, a service...), we may console ourselves just knowing that the Virgin Mary —after all a creature like ourselves— also heard the same words from the angel before facing the mission which the Lord had entrusted her with. 
 

When looking at these “signs of the times”, we are not expecting passivity (laziness, languor for lack of fighting...), but hope: to work a miracle, the Lord wants the Apostles courage and dedication and the generosity of the boy who is willing to give some barley loaves and the two fish. 

Today, the Gospel invites us to cease being so “worldly”, to stop being men who can only speak about mundane things, to speak and behave instead as “The one who comes from above”(Jn 3, 31), who is Jesus. In this text we see —once more— that in evangelic radicalism there is no happy medium. 

On the other hand, according to Benedict XVI, “each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8, 32)” (Encyclical Letter "Caritas in Veritate"). 

A transformation where Jesus Christ is the catalyst. He, who previously had to suffer the Crucifixion and then resurrect, is who will send us God's Spirit. He who has come from above. He who has shown his power and his goodness, through his many miracles. He who always makes his Father's will. He who has suffered to the last drop of blood for us. 
 

Water and Spirit are the two symbols used by Jesus. Both express the action of the Holy Spirit that purifies and grants life, cleans and encourages, calms the thirst and breathes, soften and speaks. Water and Spirit make a single thing.