21 May 2009
Ascension Day
Ego veritatem dico vobis: expedit vobis ut ego vadam: si enim non abiero, Paraclitus non veniet, alleluia
I am telling you the truth: it is better for you that I am going away; for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come, alleluia.
The word “alleluia” has a special atmosphere for us which it cannot have for Eastern Orthodox Christians; because we give it up for Lent. It keeps that Paschal feel about it even, say, in Advent, just as a food which we give up for Lent retains a festive feel even if it is not, as such, notably festive: I gave up olive oil for Lent once, and it took some months to regard it as a perfectly normal part of my diet. Just as we tend to commit excesses with that food in Paschaltide, so the church commits excesses with the alleluias, especially in the monastic liturgy. The word is tacked on to every text, sometimes in clumps, whether or not the text calls for the cry of “Praise the Lord!”. One of my favourites for sheer illogicality and unreasonable optimism is: “Mercenarius est, cuius non sunt oves propriae: vidit lupum venientem, et dimittit oves, et fugit, et lupus rapit et dispergit oves…Alleluia!” “The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it…alleluia???”
The Ascension is certainly a joyful feast, and the thought of the coming of the Paraclete certainly one to provoke alleluias. But I confess to having a battle with this every year when I read the text “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem WITH GREAT JOY”. There are only two other occasions in the Gospel where such joy is expressed: “When the Magi saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” and “The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord”. In both cases the joy is caused by the sight of Jesus, either immediate or imminent, while here, at the end of Luke’s gospel, it is Jesus’ disappearance which precedes – surely we cannot say causes – the joy.
Jesus has already assured us that the father is greater than he is; now he seems to be saying that the Holy Spirit is greater than he is, and that, therefore, we will be better off with the Spirit than with him. That isn’t what he’s saying; the Father, as underived, as origin of the Godhead, is “greater” than both Son and Sprit. it is true that if Jesus were speaking as man then the Spirit would indeed be greater than he, but I do not think that is what he is doing. The Holy Spirit is “better for us” largely because of our weakness and our fleshly nature, because we are all Thomases at heart and we cling to what we can see hear and touch; unless that is removed, we will never rise higher. In the beginning it was not so and perhaps in the greatest saints it is still not so, but for most of us the flesh is an impediment to the spirit. So what we need is the Spirit. But also because of our weakness and our fleshly nature we would prefer to keep Jesus. I can imagine that even after the resurrection somewhere in the disciples’ heart there was the unspoken cry – unspoken, but heard by Jesus nonetheless – “Lord, never mind this unknown Paraclete – just don’t you go away!”
That, I confess, is how I feel on this feast. The Collect says that it is Christ’s ascension that raises us to the heights, and that the hope of the Body is to be called to the glory of the Head, but for the moment I feel bereft. We know that Jesus tells the truth – Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true – and so we do have to accept that somehow this Paraclete is at least as good to have around as Jesus is himself, But I am not a pure spirit, and neither were the apostles, and it is undoubtedly easier when it is Jesus, the Incarnate Son, who is there.
This sense of bereavement, impending or completed, is heightened by the antiphons that are sung at this season. “Peace be with you, it is I, alleluia! Fear not, alleluia!” And, worse still at this point for those of us who are only to aware of it, “A spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see that I have: now believe, alleluia!” The Holy Spirit isn’t warm and solid (pace Hopkins) and she can’t smile, or overturn the tables of the money-changers in the temple, or take your hand, or say things in just that characteristic tone of voice, or with those well-known verbal habits and that facial expression – or die for us. Nor can she at once be God and speak to us in a human voice from human vocal chords authoritatively what she has seen with the father. And even she is not present with us on this feast, even for her we have to wait; and the disciples did not know, as we do, that the wait will be only for the space of a novena.
The joy of this feast is an exclusively spiritual one. more so than any other feast in the calendar. It is a feast of complete. and literally blind, trust in God, in the words of the Lord. What it looks and feel like to us is the final disappearance of the one we love It is, it’s true, a disappearance in triumph, a disappearance in joy, the joy of all the heavenly choirs –I think it’s St Gregory the Great who points out that it is at the Ascension and not at the Nativity that the angels are see robed in white, the colour of rejoicing, because at the Nativity the divine nature is humiliated, while at the Ascension the human nature is exalted. But a disappearance which takes all but altruistic and anticipated joy away from us and leaves the present moment, the only moment that really exists, feeling drab indeed.
So why must Jesus go before the Holy Spirit can come; why was the coming of Jesus, indeed, a prerequisite for that of the Spirit; and why should it be “better” for us that Jesus should go, to be “replaced” by the Spirit? I’d say that the second question gives a good part of the answer to the first. one cannot see – that is, receive, the Holy Spirit, unless one has seen Jesus – and so, as he explained, seen the Father also, with that same capacity. The Incarnation was necessary in order to draw us, via bodily sight, to spiritual sight, not as if we saw Jesus with bodily sight and the Spirit with spiritual sight, but that although we once knew and saw Jesus according to the flesh, we now know him so no longer. it was during his lifetime on earth, and of course more specially after the resurrection, that he taught his disciples to move from one form of sight to the other. By the time the Spirit came, their spiritual eyes were ready for her; and she is the consummation of the work of the incarnation and our confirmation in spiritual sight. The world cannot see, cannot receive, the Spirit, because it has not seen Jesus. As Jesus implied, it is only in, through the Spirit, that we can fully see Jesus: because there are so many things we could not bear (the Greek word is the same one as that used for carrying the Cross) before Pentecost, and because we cannot even hold in our minds and hearts all that we have received from the Lord. we need the Spirit to recall this to us, and so to keep Jesus with us. That is why it is to our advantage if Jesus goes and send the Spirit; not that the Spirit is greater than Jesus but that only in the Spirit do we truly possess Jesus.
There’s another reason, and a sadder one. As Dostoevsky, among others, pointed out, human nature (and therefore the church as human institution) being what it is, we would never really accept the Incarnate Son of God. We would continue to find him and offence and a scandal, and we would keep crucifying him, or using whatever method of semi-judicial murder was in vogue at the time. It is instructive that the Baha’I religion, which holds that, in some sense, God has been incarnate several times, teaches that he has een killed – murdered – in all his successive incarnations; he has never been accepted. I hold no brief for the Baha’is; but that is a sound perception of the nature of God and humankind. We can’t crucify the Holy Spirit. We can certainly ignore and blaspheme her – and we do – but we cannot affect her activity in the world, as was possible in the case of the Word Incarnate.
That means that, just as no-one can snatch us from the Father’s hand, no-one can take the Holy Spirit from us. Jesus Christ chose to be at the mercy of humans, and he still chooses to be so in the eucharist. They could take him away from his disciples, even if only for a time; and now they can deny us the eucharist if they wish and are powerful enough. But the Holy Spirit cannot be touched. So perhaps we can even see how the presence of the Holy Spirit I one that gives us the greatest safety and confidence in this unspiritual world. And we mustn’t forget that she is not any old spirit, She is the spirit of the Father and the Son; and, specifically, as St Paul calls her, the Spirit of Jesus. To meet her is to meet Jesus. I think that when the disciples first encountered the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, they at once recognised her as the one with whom they had lived all those years. It has been said that the Old Testament times were the era of the Father, New Testament times the era of the Son, and Church times the era of the Spirit. That’s oversimplifying and over-categorising, and I’m not sure it’s true anyway. But one thing is true: these three Persons are one God, one and the same God; and I don’t think the three Persons have three personalities in the loose sense in which we use the word nowadays. More of this maybe on Trinity Sunday; but I think these Persons have one personality in that sense: that they are recognisably one God. At the risk of being burned at the stake I might say “Three Persons, but one person”. If you knew Jesus, you’d recognise his Spirit. if you had really known YHWH, you would have recognised Jesus – as many did. And I suspect that those who so much dislike the God of the Old Testament have never really known Jesus.
On the day of Pentecost, then, the disciples were not presented with an unknown Paraclete They were reunited with Jesus, though in a different way. And it is in our relationship with the Holy Spirit that we will know not only the Spirit but the Incarnate Word and the Father.
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