G is for
Go
Day 7
as in Let Go, I Go, You Go. That (more or less) is what Jesus
told Mary on Easter morning when--Yes!--there was light and she saw who he
was (Jn. 20:17).
"Don't cling to me," says Jesus. Yet again, who of us will blame her for wanting to? Daughter of the same dying world we inhabit, Mary takes it for granted--as do I, as do you--that all good things inevitably must end, whether suddenly or in that long, sad slide from better to worse, from livelier to deader. In such a world you grab for the gusto as it shoots by, because gusto gone is gone for good--and that's very bad. (How oddly we creatures of the dark use words.)
Back to Mary, in whose mind is the memory, still fresh, of life at its best. This was life with Jesus in those heady pre-crucifixion days when he drove out the devils of fear and loneliness and bitter self-loathing; when, to replace them, he blessed her with first-ever inklings of what hope and love and joy are really like. Torn from her, he was. And if, by one of those freak glitches in the inexorable grinding of fate she should find her lost joy momentarily restored--well, thinks she, I'm going to hang on to it for all I'm worth.
"Let go," Jesus says. "By far the best is yet to come; and even the best of the joys you've known with me is a pale shadow of the Joy to come. I go to the Father to make it so." Suddenly, another signal of things turned inside out and on their heads by the resurrection of Christ. That the Good One is gone for Good is--in stunning Easter fact--very good.
How much more does this same Lord Jesus invite and command us to let go of the lesser joys--in some cases the tawdry and selfish pleasures--we cling to; instead to give our hearts to him, to the future he promises, to the hope he excites: and in that giving to spend our lives freely on the spreading of that hope.
Go, says he. Tell the siblings where I've gone: to my God and your God, my Father and your Father. That God in Christ be Father: this is hope not just to go for. It's hope to die for.
Day 8
Mary went. Soon the apostolic siblings went too. Then others, and others
after them, and others more, all through the centuries. They're going
still, letting go of comfort, security, ease of lifestyle, decent pay, the
chance for social standing and all the other rag-like accoutrements that
hide the shame of pointless existence in a dying world. Then they head for
that world's shadowy corners both to serve their Lord and to serve him up
to the people they find there. As they go they bounce and scurry on
their brand-new puppy legs.
What makes them go is the great Easter p.S., where
