“Now I am going to the one who sent me, and not one of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ …it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.”
2. Meditatio
So the Mass especially dedicated to Mary has, rather ironically, gone away during the very month dedicated to Mary.
I confess I am more saddened by this than perhaps I ought to be. One grows attached to holy habits. A small early morning Mass may not seem terribly important to administrators balancing schedules and sacraments, but to those of us who quietly built part of our spiritual rhythm around it, its disappearance feels personal, almost like finding an old country chapel locked without explanation.
And so I find myself spiritually standing beside the Apostles asking,
“Lord, where are you going?”
The curious thing is that Jesus speaks of His going away not as failure but as fulfillment. The Apostles interpret absence as loss, while Christ insists that absence may prepare the way for another kind of presence.
Yet I struggle with this. I like religion to remain where I left it. I like familiar pews, familiar schedules, familiar devotions. I want the holy things of life to stay put like furniture in an old farmhouse. But Christ is forever unsettling my arrangements. He keeps reminding me that Christianity is not merely about preserving routines, but about following a living Person.
Perhaps I had begun loving the comfort of the Mass schedule more than the God toward whom the schedule pointed. Perhaps the ache caused by its disappearance is itself revealing something important: that hunger for God is often sharpened precisely when ordinary consolations go away.
Jesus has been strangely “on the go” for me lately on Saturday mornings. About a month ago, the 7:00 a.m. Saturday Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral—which had just begun gathering a faithful little flock—was suspended because of the season of Confirmations and First Communions. At first the suspension was presented as temporary, but now the 7:00 a.m. Saturday Mass no longer even appears on the Cathedral’s daily Mass schedule. It seems the Mass has been quietly cancelled indefinitely.
For there are some graces God can only give us after we discover how deeply we miss Him.
The cancellation of a little Saturday morning Mass is hardly Calvary. Yet even small absences expose how much of my faith depends upon predictable structures. Christ, however, remains gloriously untamed. He disappears through one door only to arrive unexpectedly through another.
And perhaps the whole Christian life is learning not merely to follow Jesus when He stays, but also when He goes.
3. Oratio
Lord Jesus Christ, when You go where I cannot follow, my heart fills quickly with confusion and grief.
I cling to familiar altars, familiar schedules, familiar consolations, because they make me feel secure.
Yet You promise that even Your departures are working toward my good.
Teach me to trust Your absences as much as Your presence. When doors close, when comforts disappear, when I feel spiritually displaced, send Your Advocate to remind me that You have not abandoned me.
Make me faithful in seasons of interruption, and let my longing itself become prayer.
The saints today—Nereus, Achilleus, and Pancras—understood that Christianity is always a religion on the move. These martyrs lived in a Roman world obsessed with permanence: eternal empire, eternal power, eternal Caesar. Yet the Christian faith spread precisely through people willing to lose earthly security for heavenly citizenship.
Saint Pancras was only a boy, yet he stood before emperors with a courage that bewildered Rome. Nereus and Achilleus abandoned worldly military glory for another kingdom entirely. All three saints discovered that following Christ often means allowing old allegiances to go away so that a deeper loyalty may arrive.
Chesterton would have delighted in this paradox: the Church survives not because Christians cling desperately to comfort, but because saints continually let themselves be sent elsewhere. The Church advances by holy displacement.
Even the Apostles had to lose the visible Christ in order to receive the invisible Spirit.
And so perhaps my irritation over a missing Saturday Mass reveals less about liturgical scheduling and more about my own resistance to spiritual mobility. I want Jesus domesticated into my preferred timetable. Yet the risen Christ keeps moving ahead of me like the pillar of fire in the desert, teaching me again that faith is not possession but pursuit.
5. Actio — In Light of Laudato Si’ and Synodality
We are always capable of going out of ourselves towards the other. Unless we do this, other creatures will not be recognized for their true worth; we are unconcerned about caring for things for the sake of others; we fail to set limits on ourselves in order to avoid the suffering of others or the deterioration of our surroundings.
The parable of the Good Samaritan and the love with which we relate to one another are key elements of Fratelli Tutti. The Encyclical highlights the bonds of love, solidarity and hospitality that can and should animate a family, in which each person can develop with his or her own dignity. The Holy Father warns against the culture and “acts of discarding” that are contrary to this love: the discarding of the unborn, the child, the disabled, the elderly; but also the discarding of families with problems or difficulties. In such a throwaway culture, families are disfigured and impoverished, as is society as a whole (cf. FT 19).
Laudato Si’ reminds me that creation itself is dynamic, always moving, growing, dying, and rising again. Synodality likewise calls the Church not to stagnation but to pilgrimage together.
Action:
Today I will resist grumbling over interruptions and instead ask: “What grace may God be making room for through this change?”
Rather than merely lamenting what has gone away, I will look prayerfully for where the Advocate may already be arriving.
6. Song Pairing 🎵
🎶 “I Will Always Love You” — Dolly Parton🎵
A song about departure that understands love is not always proved by staying. Sometimes genuine love must let go while still remaining faithful.
7. Movie Pairing 🎬
🎬Movie: Shane (1953)
Like Christ disappearing from the sight of the Apostles, Shane rides away at the end not because he does not care, but because his leaving changes those who remain behind. Some departures become permanent lessons.
8. Poetic Verse
The empty pew at Saturday Mass became its own sermon.
Christ sometimes leaves not to abandon me but to enlarge my hunger.
The Advocate often arrives through doors I did not want opened.
