Sixth Easter

John 14: 28

Jesus said, “You’ve heard me tell you, ‘I’m going away, and I’m coming back’. If you loved me, you would be glad that I’m on my way to the Father because the Father is the goal and purpose of my life.”

At our house, Sunday lunch was a roast dinner. It always had been and I guess that I always expected that it would be. When I left home and went to live in a university dorm, after the Sunday community Mass, the entire house population would gather in the dining hall for a big banquet meal. But it hardly ever was a roast dinner, so I found that I was never satisfied. It might have been schnitzel, fried chicken or pasta. It didn’t matter. I was used to and needed my roast dinner on Sunday.

Decades have passed. But give me a choice, and on Sundays I would most like to be with my family sharing a roast dinner. It doesn’t happen as often now. But when we do gather it means a very special time for me. It is funny how something like a roast meal can become so much a part of my identity, of who I am.

So, too, our identity as Christians can be traced to our Baptism and our Confirmation and our reception of the Eucharist in what we called the sacraments of initiation that give to us the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s loving presence with us.

Just as I learned to take my familial identity with me and have it be part of who I am, even on those roast dinner-less Sundays, the days I am not with my family, so, too, my identity as a Christian rests in the realisation that the Spirit, by virtue of all the sacraments, walks with me wherever my life’s journey takes me.