Fifty two years ago I walked out of our family home to begin life on my own.
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
PASSING ON THE SPIRIT
Minutes before I left my dad blessed me. It was short and simple. I doubt it took 30 seconds. He made me kneel on the stark and faded tiled floor of our simple living room and,qq placing his hands on my head, blessed me. My father was a fairly articulate man and might have said a lot but chose not to. The gesture of blessing needs few words. Of itself it says what is important and imparts something beyond words, a person’s spirit. I was 17 at the time, an anomalous mixture of cockiness and piety, and the blessing meant little to me then.
Five years later, my dad died. I had seen him in those interim years, on vacations and during some of his own brief visits to the seminary, and we had talked, perhaps more deeply than ever before since he now considered me an adult and related to me in a new way. But, unlike the time previous to me leaving home, he no longer tried to instruct and admonish me, or run an audit on my values and prayer life. What he had wanted to say to me had already been said, many times. I knew how he felt, what he thought, and what his values were. There was no need to say it again. He had given me his blessing.
A blessing is a way of remaining permanently present to someone. It is a way of giving someone our love, our insight, our strength, our presence, in a word, our spirit, in our physical absence. It is always based upon a prior relationship. We can only authentically bless someone we have shared something with and, the deeper and more profound the prior sharing, the deeper and more profound the blessing.
This is the mystery of the Ascension and Pentecost, of letting go and imparting the spirit. Jesus came and left us with his blessing - his spirit, the Holy Spirit, is received by all who receive that blessing.
Through that spirit, Jesus is present to us in a way that is far deeper than he was ever present to his disciples when he was physically with them.
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