Seventh Sunday of Easter
The Ascension of the Lord
Our restoration into the life and love of God’s Fatherhood, comes through prayer. Prayer expresses Divine Love. The Holy Spirit is Divine Love. The Spirit, the binding love between the Father and the Son, binds us also into their communion. We become one with them, not because of our prayer to them, but their prayer for us.
Jesus, on the night of the Passover, prays for us who wish to believe, that is participate in Divine Love: The three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one in love. Listening in awe, we hear then experience the power of his prayer, performed out of his intense love.
I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me (Jn 17:20–21).
Oneness with the Father’s love comes through the promise. Jesus will not leave us orphaned, desolate. He lives in us and we live in Him by the power and love of his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes comforting, strengthening us with his power and love, adopting us into the Father’s love. Through Jesus’ prayer we too are one in love with the Father, Son, and Spirit.
Prayer is power. Through prayer, we believe all things, hope all things, endure all things because prayer unites—binds—us to God (I Cor 13:7).). Though Jesus’ prayer, God infuses his love into us making us powerful.
Made perfect through God’s loving power, our weaknesses no longer control us. Made strong in grace, as St. Paul tells us, Divine Love infuses in us a confidence—a faithfulness—which strengthen us to do all things (II Cor 12:9), even to admit our powerlessness. Admitting our weakness, we open ourselves to receive Love’s power.
We, who recognize and contemplate love’s power, acknowledge then believe in the Father’s love, his power and omnipotence, not our own. Through belief, we recognize our power comes from Him and by participating in his love, we too become powerful. Jesus affirms this declaring, “All things are possible” to him who believes in his powerful love (Matt 19:26).
St. Paul, inspiring the truth of who we are, adopted into the life and love of our heavenly Father, reminds us as he did the Colossians: “You have come to fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority” (Col 2:9–10). Receiving the fullness of life, the Holy Spirit, the power and presence of the Father’s and Son’s love, fills us, restoring us into perfect union with the Father.
Divine Power, as seen in miracles of Jesus, transforms us. Weakened and sometimes crushed, feeling powerless, Jesus sent on a mission by his Father transforms our weaknesses into strengths, our brokenness into wholeness, and our sins into holiness. Yet, to receive the fulness of God’s Fatherhood, St. Paul encouraging the Ephesians explains, while exhorting us
Put off the old man that belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Eph 4:22–24).
Out of his love, Jesus, sent by the Father, desires to heal then seal us in his love. This sealing love cleanses then sears the wounds and sins of our lives giving us a new life.
A new life in Christ puts the mind of Christ into our hearts. That is, we live and love this central truth: God is Father and Jesus reveals the Fatherhood to us sending us his Holy Spirit. In the creed, we proclaim, “I believe in God the Father Almighty.” This mystery, God is Father and being Father He has a Son and the love between the Father and Son becomes his Spirit of Love, is the central mystery of Christianity (CCC. # 261). The Council of Constantinople, a council held in 381 confirms Jesus as true God and true man is One with the Father and Spirit. “The Church confesses following the New Testament: One God and Father from whom all things are, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and one Holy Spirit in whom all things are (CCC. # 258). No greater power exists than this communion of love.
God’s identity, his essence, is love and love is his power. His power and love come from the union of his will, wisdom and justice (CCC, # 271). To believe in God, then, recognizes God is not only almighty and all-loving, but He is also Father. Fatherhood results from God’s loving power. God Who is gift-love gives of Himself. He gives his identity and in so doing, He is Father. Fatherhood reveals this love. Whatever exists has an identity, an essence; and that identity comes from the one fathering it. God, as Father, creator of heaven and earth, gives us his identity, his love. Everything the Father creates, He imbues with his love. True power, understood correctly, loves. Love gives. Love wants to fill the other with power. The Father desires to implant in us his power and love. This is his greatest desire: to share Himself giving us both his Son and Spirit.
Without believing in the Fatherhood of God, all of Christianity collapses. Without the Father giving his Son his identity, Jesus becomes just another creature. He is not truly God and truly Man. If Jesus is not truly the Son of God and the Son of Man, then we who are promised to be adopted into God’s Fatherhood by the power and love of the Holy Spirit, become orphans, unredeemed.
The Holy Spirit is love for He comes from the communion of the Father and Son. His love invites us into full communion with the Father through the Son. In this communion, our hearts blaze with love, cleansing us from every impurity, perfecting us with every gift. These gifts: wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, courage, piety, and fear of the Lord (CCC #1831), burn brightly for we become enlightened aglow with the Glory of God, the Holy Spirit. Aflame in the Spirit, our hearts burn with love’s power. Burning brightly with Divine Love, we have the power to change the face of the earth.
In Jesus’ last discourse, He declares this incredible, astounding mystery of God’s powerful Spirit adopting us. “All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (Jn 16:15). We have the fullness of the Father’s love through Jesus his Son giving us everything through his Spirit. This is the greatest promise of our God. It is also the essential belief of Christianity. The Son sends the Holy Spirit to adopt us into the fullness of the Trinity. Thus, we profess: We believe in One God, Who is Father, Jesus is his Son and our Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier Who gifts us divine love.
In his last discourse, Jesus lifts his eyes towards his Father affirms this mystery. While praying from the depths of his heart, He petitions,
O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you; and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them (Jn 17:25–26).
Embraced in the Father’s love, we admire others as admiration reigns in our hearts for the Father admires us absolutely. We show divine affection. Affection, that powerful divine touch, frames our hearts within the Trinity. Framed, we too long to touch others even when the others resist or reject our friendship. Divine affection also creates the framework to develop those most intimate of friendships, spousal love. Nothing resembles the Holy Spirit’s love more than spousal love, two becoming one through a sincere gift of self to our beloved.
The Spirit affirms our hearts too. Divine affirmation values our hearts and nothing like our heavenly Father’s affirming love authenticates our value. We are his children. We are never orphans. He adopts us bestowing upon us his holy Name, his identity, which glorifies us. Jesus expresses his absolute joy at giving us his glory, the very same glory that the Father gave to Him.
Again during his last discourse Jesus deep in prayer for us, tells us, “The glory which you have given me I have given to them” (Jn 17:22). Jesus glorifies us as the Father glorified Him. Our glory comes when the Spirit breathes into us the fire of divine love. This flame of love, affirms and instills in us a courage, a strengthening of our hearts to overcome any struggle that seeks to diminish or demolish the Father’s love.
Confessing our communion in the Father’s love, Jesus, speaking for the Father, tells us “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18). His authority now becomes ours when we confess God is Father, Jesus his Son is our Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit breathes into our hearts the power of Divine Love.
This mysterious gift of the Spirit’s love illuminates our minds, strengthens our wills, and restores our life in the Father’s love. His sharing of Himself infuses in us that secret and silent strength. Strengthened, our hearts are full of Divine Love and dwell in his love. Dwelling within the power and presence of the Trinity, we have divine power to moves mountains, cure the incurable, do the impossible, even conquer death.