Did you love?

I used to go on walks with my Dad when I was small. He and Mam would sometimes bring us to the park, sometimes to country roads and they used to tell us to breathe in the fresh air. We didn’t often relish this because country roads are full of farm yard smells, manure and the likes which to our young jackeen nostrils was a little too much to handle. What I also remember were the times when we’d cross a field or walk down a road or under forest trees with brambles and bushes and only a narrow passage to cross. I would shelter behind my Dad as he pushed the branches out of my way and follow in His shadow as he made my path clear. His huge frame would eclipse my smaller one. Keeping close to Him I felt safe and although there was the odd occasion when a branch would slip his grasp and swing my way, he kept me safe.

Right when the rains are falling heavily on your soul, and your days and nights are long; when your life feels hard or lonely, know that those you have loved and who have gone before you, are never far from you. They have woven the tapestry of your life with abundant colours and now their colours shine brightly from Heaven to you. The fathers we have loved, the mothers we have adored, the grandparents, the sisters, the brothers, our husbands, our wives, even our own children; those we cradled in life, stand with their arms ready for us to come to them, so that they can offer us peace from the pain we have lived in their absence. And from within them, right in the heart of love, Jesus who has ascended, waits with a love we can not now comprehend. All our troubles will be healed. All our suffering will be soothed.

Today, when Jesus ascends to Heaven, is a day that calls on our faith as never before. The resurrection is for me easier to take. I can trust the disciples and the Gospels that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead. They saw His body, they told the story and kept it alive. But today, He leaves us and we are called to believe that we are not alone and that there is somewhere else that is envisioned for us. And the path we choose now will lead us there. Today we are called on to love. We are here to ease suffering until our time has come. And as we live we have as our guide the One who walked the worst path of all, in whose steps we can follow. His path will keep us safe. We may be taunted, we may look like idiots who have no power in this world, we may be left behind in the world’s big rat race, we may suffer unbearable loss and hurt. But our path is carved deeply inwards to the source of love and it will lead us home. On our journey back to where we first started, Jesus is standing waiting for us. And not alone will he be there to greet us when the journey ends, but He will walk the Way again and again with us throughout our lives. We must believe He has gone and has not gone. We must know that our pain now is part of the love that will then completely surround us.  And when our days here end and life opens out in front of us, in the company of those whom we have loved, we will simply be asked, “and you my child, did you love”? 

Ms. Helen Walsh

28th May 2006