As we approach Pentecost, we listen this Sunday to a tender Jesus saying farewell to his disciples (John 14: 18-21). We’ll hear many words about the love bonds between the Lord and us, the intimacy of the God-and-us union. An advocate will be sent to be with us, to be “with you” and “in you.” We won’t be orphaned when he leaves, Jesus tells his disciples, because “I will come to you,” and “you are in me and I in you.” It is not only the Lord lives in us, but we live in him. In fact, St. Paul uses “en Cristo,” in Christ, 150 times in his epistles. Maybe a good metaphor for this “in” intimacy would be air. We live in air, but air is also in us, and both kinds of air are necessary. Perhaps it only is from the experience of a long, loving friendship that we can understand the intimacy Jesus speaks of. Long friends may not even see one another often or live near one another, but they live in the friendship, and they carry their friend in their mind and heart. Or, I heard a little story once about a frustrated fish that wanted to see the ocean, not realizing that the ocean was what it lived in. Sometimes that is like me when I ask where God is, even while I actually am living “en Cristo.” The Christ is within us but also is the ocean in which we live. He is poured into our hearts through the Spirit given to us (Rom 5:5). May the loving intimacy of Jesus’ words soak into our souls this week.
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia