Waiting for the Holy Spirit

 Seventh Sunday of Easter 2020

Readings for Year A: Acts 1:12-14; Psalm 26; I Peter 4:13-16; John 17:1-11

This Sunday has a slightly strange feel to it.  On Thursday we celebrated the Ascension and next Sunday we will celebrate the coming to the Holy Spirit on the disciples at Pentecost.   Today in our second reading from the Acts of the Apostles we have a picture of the disciples waiting.  Jesus has just been taken up from them and they have gone back to the upper room where they were staying.  Among those gathered there are the women, probably those who had accompanied them from Galilee, who had been at the foot of the cross and who were the first witness to resurrection.   Among them is Mary. 

 We might imagine those disciples.  What had they experienced?   They had arrived in Jerusalem a few weeks earlier, perhaps thinking they knew all about Jesus, the Jesus they had followed from Galilee.  Their hopes must have been high when he was welcomed by the crowds on Palm Sunday but all of that was turned upside down.  We get a sense of what this was like for them when we read the story of the men on the Road to Emmaus, despondent because Jesus had been crucified and all their hopes seem to have turned to dust.  Then, like those men, the disciples encounter the risen Jesus with a mixture of joy and bewilderment, they cannot quite believe it.  Now, having had Jesus with them for a while he has gone again, this time taken up into heaven.  Yes, there has been the joy an exhilaration of the resurrection but along with that there must still be the shock and bewilderment of the events they have experienced, events they still do not wholly understand.  There immediate response is to go back to the safety of the upper room, to pray and to wait. 

 In our present situation we might identify with those disciples.  For many people in fact this time is busier than ever, especially for those on the frontline providing health care and keeping essential services running.  However, for many of us we are shut in our own “upper room” of lockdown, waiting.  Even as we celebrate the events following Easter we may well be bewildered, frightened, unsure where things are going to go.  What can we learn from those disciples?  One is that we can join in prayer, perhaps not physically together, but aware that as we pray there are millions joined with us in prayer.  Like the disciples we are aware that God is with us, even if at times he seems distant and if it is in ways we do not quite understand.  We like them are waiting.  Yes, waiting for the end of lockdown, for the crisis to somehow come to a resolution, but also like them waiting on God.  We too are waiting for that light of the Holy Spirit.  Waiting for that gift of insight and courage.  Not perhaps courage to go out into the marketplace and proclaim the Gospel in the way they did (social distancing might make that difficult!) but the courage to live out the Gospel in a new and unfamiliar situation.  Let us make our own the prayer of the disciples, “Come Holy Spirit”.  

 Fr Chris Pedley, S.J