The Emptiness that Heals ealsH

Introduction

Liturgical setting

The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert where he prayed and fasted for forty days (Mt. 4:1-2). In imitation and honor of its Lord, the Church prescribed a penitential season of forty days in preparation for Easter. So counting back forty days from Easter gives us a Wednesday as the beginning of Lent. (We don’t count the Sundays because we never fast on Sundays.)

Scripture says that after the resurrection Jesus appeared to the apostles and disciples for forty days on various occasions, and then promising to send them the Holy Spirit, he ascended into heaven (Acts 1: 3; Lk 24: 50-52). So counting forty day after Easter gives us a Thursday (last Thursday) for the feast of the Ascension. But the Church in some places moves the feast to the following Sunday (today) to make it more convenient for the faithful.

Jesus’ farewells

Jesus bade us a first farewell when he died on the cross. We liturgically symbolize that on Good Friday by stripping the altar clean of candle and clutter. In simple and silent procession we transfer the Blessed Sacrament to some obscure place in the sacristy. Then we throw open the doors of the tabernacle, which remains empty for the rest of Good Friday until the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday. The silent emptiness of the tabernacle whispers, "He's gone," and we feel a bit lonely and empty like the tabernacle itself.

In the Ascension Jesus bade us a second and final farewell. He led the disciples out of the city as far as Bethany, then raising his hands he blessed them and ascended into heaven (Acts 1:3; Lk 24:50-53). That, too, we liturgically symbolized in the old days. After the reading of the Ascension gospel, a server would abruptly snuff out the Easter candle burning in our midst for forty days, and he would dramatically whisk it off to some dark closet in the sacristy. There it remained out of sight for another whole year until the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday. That liturgical gesture also quietly said, "He's gone," and again we felt a bit lonely and empty.

But since we are never without the presence of Jesus in our midst, liturgists later decided that the Easter candle should not be snuffed out on the feast of the Ascension. It now remains lighted in our midst until next Sunday, Pentecost Sunday—the feast of Jesus’ new presence with us in his Holy Spirit. Though the feast of Pentecost puts an end to the Easter season, the Easter candle is no longer whisked off to some obscure nook in the sacristy but is now moved close to the baptismal font. There it will burn brightly whenever we baptize our little ones into Christ. On the Monday after Pentecost, we return to Ordinary Time, and we will coast along in it through the warm summer months and into late fall. Then we will start the whole liturgical cycle over again with the First Sunday of Advent in preparation for Christmas 2005.

“The taste of death”

Farewells are difficult for everyone. They are particularly difficult for me. My parents were Italian immigrants who came to this country at the beginning of the last century. Here in Milwaukee my father left behind a brother and also a poor but very rich Italian community. He and my mother migrated north to Manitowoc. When our mother was taken from us prematurely, my sister and I were left without a comforter, our father without a helpmate and our house without a soul. (I can say it on Mother’s Day today perhaps with even more meaning than many of you can —mothers are, indeed, comforters, helpmates and souls.) To maintain communion with the Italian community left behind, we’d always make an annual pilgrimage in an old model T to that far-off metropolis of Milwaukee, which for my father was "Little Italy."

When the visit was over and we bade farewell, my father always wept, and I always wept with him, though I didn't know exactly why we were weeping. Because of that very early experience, to this very day I don’t fare well with farewells. I always try to avoid those painful partings that life inevitably foists upon us. If possible, I simply disappear; I sneak out the back door when no one is looking. The Orthodox theologian Nicholas Baerdeyev says, “All farewells have the taste of death about them." Maybe that’s why we cry when saying goodbye.

A strange farewell

If farewells have the taste of death about them, then how strange is the farewell of the Ascension. Listen to my friend whose mystic thoughts I periodically share with you. She writes in a letter dated March 7^th, 1978:

Jesus departs from the disciples in Bethany on Ascension Day, and they are filled not with sadness but “with great joy” (Lk 24:25).What a strange farewell is that! The earth is filled with the absence of Jesus, and their hearts are burning with great joy!

(She continues) Jesus bids the disciples farewell and they return to Jerusalem in mystical darkness and silence. They go directly to the temple where “they spend all their time praising God” (Lk 24: 53). Jesus sends the disciples to do as he had done in his Ascension: he sends them forth to fill the world with an emptiness that heals.

How in the world do you unscramble that bit of mysticism for ordinary people like you and me? How do you unscramble it for a culture like ours? To the question what do you do with your emptiness, the culture cries out at us every step of the way saying, “For God’s sake, you fix your emptiness. For God’s sake, you fill it up. You fill it up with any old thing, if it has to be, but by all means, you fill it up.”

Filling it up with things

The culture has us filling up our emptiness with things. Conned constantly by the commercials, we betake ourselves to the great malls where we find a hundred useful things to fill our needs. But there we also find a thousand inane things to fill our emptiness.

Last week a friend from Brazil surprised me with a visit. I dropped him off at a mall to do some shopping, not for food or medicine desperately needed for his kids back home, but for a pair of Oakley sunglasses for his son. Those glasses have not yet found their way into backward Brazil. You can find them only in the good old USA. The cheap ones cost $120; the really good ones cost about $180. My friend works hard for his money and is an intelligent man. At the end of the day, he viewed the Oakley sunglasses as one more inane attempt to fill an emptiness which is always a bottomless pit you can never fill up. So he decided not to buy them. There in the malls we fill our emptiness with things and toys, and more things and toys, but then, of course, we have to work harder and longer. We owe, we owe; so it’s off to work we have to go. Is this what our mystic friend means by “an emptiness that heals”?

When Christian preaching declares that the poor are blessed, that can’t possibly mean that the destitute are blessed. That doesn’t make sense. But it does mean that they are blessed who are content with having all the things they need, instead of being content with all the things they want, like Oakley sunglasses and other such things. It does mean they are blessed if their lives are emptied and freed of things. Is this what our mystic friend means by “an emptiness that heals”?

Filling it up with noise

Here’s another attempt to unscramble her mysticism. The culture has us filling up our emptiness with noise. Technology has blessed, but also cursed, us with all kinds of electronic gadgets like boom-boxes, earphones, amplifiers, etc. to kill the sound of silence which the culture can’t bear. We have cell phones to carry with us because they can be so helpful in some situations. But we carry them also so that we can be chattering with someone about something. It helps to kill the awful sound of silence. When we’re waiting on the phone because “all the operators are busy with other customers, and your call will be taken in the order it was received” the culture thinks it has to switch you over to music just to make sure you don’t suffer withdrawal symptoms if the sound of silence, that emptiness of sound, lasts too long.

Trappist monks are famous for their silence. I don’t know what they do now, but they used to take a vow of silence. Basically they never talk except to God in prayer or to their spiritual directors or to themselves. They certainly never chatter or babble on. They don’t turn on TVs or VCRs or DVDs. They believe that if we turn down the volume of the gadgetry in our lives and turn up the sound of silence, we will hear the many sounds we were born to hear, like the babbling of the brook and the lapping of the lake; like the cooing of the turtledove and the whistling of the wind. In my many jaunts along Lake Michigan, I always feel a bit sorry for that lonely runner who has his ears all plugged up with gadgetry, and who is missing all those wonderful sounds he was born to hear.

But above all, monastic tradition believes that in the sound of silence we hear voices, voices we need to hear, voices that want to say something saving to our souls. We don’t hear these voices when the volume of noise is turned up. I believe that salvation will come to the inner city only when it has turned down the noise and has turned up the sound of silence, and in that silence hears voices. On second thought, that holds good also for the suburbs. They have their own kind of noise to turn down, and they have their own kind of voices they have to hear. I think that’s what our mystic friend means when she speaks of filling the world with an emptiness that heals.

When Jesus left the apostles in his ascension, they didn’t head straight for the nearest bar to fill up their emptiness. They didn’t try a fast-fix to fill up their emptiness. They didn’t go looking for a gang or a mob to fill up their emptiness. Momentarily orphaned by Jesus, scripture says the apostles returned to Jerusalem and headed straight for the temple, and there “they remained in constant prayer” (Lk 24: 53). They went straight to the temple, and there they waited for their emptiness to be filled, not with any old kind of stuff but with nothing less than “power from on high” (Lk 24:24).

Conclusion

Not as empty as we think

It’s OK to be empty. That’s the message of our mystic friend. But like the apostles we must take our emptiness and possess it with patience. We shouldn’t jump at any old fullness to fill it up. Instead we should go to the temple, and there pray and wait for a fullness worthwhile waiting for. There we should pray and wait for “power from on high.”

When we come back next Sunday it will be Pentecost, feast of that “power from on high,” feast of the Holy Spirit. The Easter candle will not be lit, but neither will it be whisked out of sight. It will be moved close to the baptismal font where we will be able to see it every Sunday. There the candle will constantly remind us that Jesus has not left us orphans in his ascension but is now present to us in his Holy Spirit. There the candle will especially remind us that we aren’t as empty as we think we are. And from its place near the baptismal font the candle will send us forth on Christian mission: to fill the world with an emptiness that heals.