What
are you looking for? Whether you know it or not, the answer is Jesus, Father
Bart van Roijen told Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute.
We all want to be happy, he said, and we all have our
own ideas about what will make us happy. “But there has to be a context to our
happiness, and without God we cannot be truly happy.”
In a talk titled Pentecost: The Word Made Flesh
Revisited, Father Van Roijen said John’s Gospel is framed at both ends with a
question asked Jesus: “What (or Whom) are you looking for?”, and between those
two questions are a number of stories of people who found the answer in
Him.
In the
first chapter of John, two disciples of John the Baptist set out to follow Jesus
as he passes by; on seeing them he asks them “What are you looking for?” (Jn
1:38). After the resurrection, he meets the weeping
Mary
Magdalene outside the empty tomb, and asks her “Whom are you looking for?” (Jn
20:15)
Others who come to Jesus on their own searches
include Nicodemus in chapter 3, and the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter
4. They’re looking for other things—but in finding Jesus, they find everything
else they truly want. “They have seen the Lord, and they are
satisfied.”
Father Van Roijen described the story of the
Samaritan woman as “a love story that is truly satisfying.” The woman is
desperate for love, despite her five ex-husbands and her current boyfriend. She
is an outcast in the community, too—reduced to drawing water at noon, a time
when no one will be out in the hot sun of the Middle East.
Jesus, Father Van Roijen said, is number seven, the
true husband in her life (in a spiritual sense, of course). She recognizes Him
as the Messiah, and leaves her water jar—
which had been the whole point of her trip to the well—as she goes
off to tell the story to the villagers who have ostracized her.
“He who is speaking to her is her true spouse. She leaves her jar.
She’s finished with that endless task of looking. She has found.”
The same thing can happen for us, Father van Roijen
said. Jesus’ teaching is centred around this question, and “He reveals Himself
as the answer to this question. Jesus doesn’t just leave us looking—He tells us
‘here I am.’ In Christ we already share must fully that which awaits us [in
heaven].”
People look for many things—acceptance, love, power,
recognition, approval, security. To the extent that these are good things, we
will find them when we find Jesus. But sometimes we may be looking for the wrong
things, and then we need to repent.
“Are you looking for your one heart’s desire, or are
you distracted by other things?” Father van Roijen asked. “That’s a good
question to ask every day.”
As disciples who have found Jesus, he said, we should
have certain distinguishing marks.
We should be in communion with God’s commandments and
word; we should love one another; we should have faith in the One God has sent;
and we should be in unity with one another. These things may sound simple
enough, but they are only possible by God’s power through the Holy
Spirit.
“The Holy Spirit is essential,” he told the
audience.” Otherwise we’d be trying to accomplish God’s work on our
own.”
Father van Roijen also spoke on Mary’s Life in the Spirit: Journey towards a New
Pentecost. He noted that, while the story of the Annunciation is extremely
familiar to us today, it was completely new and unexpected to Mary, and it
wouldn’t have been entirely clear that Gabriel’s visit was a good thing.
Yet
despite any fear she may have felt, she said “yes” to God and to the Holy
Spirit—she “spoke a passing word and embraced the eternal Word,” in the words of
St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
“We, too, must answer our God with a word,” Father
van Roijen said.
As Mary’s journey continues, we learn more about the
Holy Spirit. As she visits Elizabeth, John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s
womb. ”The Spirit is infectious—we see it as it leaps from person to
person.”
After Jesus’ birth, Mary ponders the events in her
heart. “It takes time to treasure and to ponder, Father van Roijen said. “We
need to allow time for our roots to sink deep into our souls.”
At the Presentation in the Temple, she encounters
Simeon and Anna, who are waiting in hope, as the disciples are told to do after
Jesus’ ascension, and as we ourselves must do. And God blessed both of them for
their waiting, as they beheld the glory of God.
They also prophesied to Mary, and to us, what the
Christian life will be, as Simeon told her a sword would pierce her
heart.
“The life in the Spirit is not a bed of roses but a
crown of thorns,” Father van Roijen said.
In her docility to God’s will, Mary’s whole life is a
model for our prayer, he said. “We are handmaids of the Lord. Our prayer does
not dictate to God, but opens us more fully to Him.”
—Richard
Dunstan
