Journeying with Jesus during the Easter season is a call for us to gain greater understanding about the risen Christ in our lives. Each year we celebrate the weeks of the Easter season, and each year we are called to mediate and reflect upon this reality. Part of the reality of the risen Christ is celebrated next weekend with Christ’s Ascension, then, the week after, we celebrate Pentecost and the presence of the Holy Spirit with us. Today, in our Gospel, Jesus gets us ready for the reality of the Ascension by telling us he will send us the Holy Spirit as an advocate. We might think of the Holy Spirit as an advocate in the legal sense, as one who would advocate for us before a court of law. But, also, the Holy Spirit functions relationally as an advocate, as one who brings us help, consolation, comfort, and encouragement.
All that is well and good, but how to we live the reality of the risen Christ in our lives? How do we live out the reality of the Holy Spirit? I guess those are big questions each of us needs to ask ourselves, realizing there is not just one answer. As most of you know, I love pilgrimage as a part of my spirituality. In addition to going on pilgrimage, particularly hiking pilgrimages, I am a member of different forums on the internet where pilgrims share information. Also, I read a lot of books on pilgrimage and listen to pilgrimage podcasts. I was reading a post in one of the forums where a pilgrim was complaining about a really bad day he had on the pilgrimage trail, saying that he had lost the spirit of the Camino. He was dismayed to learn that he had to pay admission to visit an historic Cathedral, that his friend was denied entrance to the mass by the usher when she arrived 10 minutes late, and then he saw a sign in a restaurant bathroom that said: “Please pilgrims – only take the toilet paper that you are going to use right now – don’t take the entire roll with you!” This post was made the days before the pandemic, so maybe with the shortage of toilet paper these days, we can understand why someone would take a whole roll of toilet paper from a public bathroom.
There were a lot of comments other pilgrims made to that post in response, as you can imagine. Many of them were trying to give this pilgrim encouragement through the difficult day he was having, to show him that the spirit of the Camino is love, encouragement, and grace, and that there were probably very good reasons behind the rules and regulations that affected him that day. One pilgrim responded with a quote that is a common saying on the Camino: " El peregrino no exige , agradece,” which in English says: “A pilgrim does not demand, he gives thanks.” Perhaps the Spirit of the Risen Christ is calling us to give thanks and to be grateful for the blessings we have, for the opportunity we have this day to serve the Lord and to serve our brothers and sisters, for the graces that the Lord gives us to learn from our challenges, sufferings, and inconveniences.
There were a lot of comments other pilgrims made to that post in response, as you can imagine. Many of them were trying to give this pilgrim encouragement through the difficult day he was having, to show him that the spirit of the Camino is love, encouragement, and grace, and that there were probably very good reasons behind the rules and regulations that affected him that day. One pilgrim responded with a quote that is a common saying on the Camino: " El peregrino no exige , agradece,” which in English says: “A pilgrim does not demand, he gives thanks.” Perhaps the Spirit of the Risen Christ is calling us to give thanks and to be grateful for the blessings we have, for the opportunity we have this day to serve the Lord and to serve our brothers and sisters, for the graces that the Lord gives us to learn from our challenges, sufferings, and inconveniences.
When I prayed the 30 days of the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola last summer, it was greatly emphasized how much gratitude and thanksgiving were a part of Ignatian spirituality. The exercises recommend that when we review our day, we review those things for which we are grateful, that we express our thanksgiving and gratitude to the Lord, that we look at God’s presence in all things and be grateful from the blessings we have and the lessons we learn even in our most difficult experiences and challenges.
In our personal lives and in our community, we are to see the different ways the Holy Spirit is present to us, to foster the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In our personal lives and in our community, it is easy to criticize, to make excuses, to grumble, and lash out at others, rather than trying to look for a solution or to make things better. It is easy to complain about things in our lives, in our parish, and in the world, to think things should be done differently and could certainly be better. But what are we doing to help out? What are we doing to bring the spirit of the risen Christ into the world?
In his Apostolic Exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis asserts that wherever the need for the light and life of the risen Christ is greatest, that is where we want to be, both as individuals and as a community of faith. Pope Francis says that living out our identity as evangelizers of the Gospel and as bearers of the light of the risen Christ, we will not stay all neat and perfect on the sidelines, but will take on the “smell of the sheep,” embracing human life and touching the suffering flesh of Christ that we see in others. Although we contemplate the presence of the risen Christ with us in the Easter season in a special way, we also are called to have a sense of Easter joy every day of our journey. We are to be people of the Spirit. We are to be a community of the Spirit. How do we answer that call?
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