In one of the most startling Gospels of any Sunday, we see Jesus, this morning, making arrangements to go away. That may be a rather homey domestic picture of the Lord of Glory, but nonetheless, Jesus is going through that complex task of getting things in order before he leaves. Arranging things with family and friends. We all have to do that from time to time. When we go away we do need to make arrangements, sensible arrangements, providing for people in our care. A parent of a small child needs to arrange for a baby-sitter, and outline what to do in an emergency, in order just to go to dinner, or to a meeting. All of this if we are going away even for a few hours. Well, Jesus is about to leave his disciples, not for a dinner out, not for a vacation, but for an undetermined, and unimaginable, length of time. And he feels he has to make all the necessary arrangements prior to that departure. Jesus, on the eve of his departure from his earthly ministry is making arrangements with his disciples, for his disciples, for us, for the time he will be away. Preparing them, and us, for his physical absence. Telling them what they need to know before he leaves. What we are to do, until he returns. When he will return no one knows. It has been two thousand years, it may be while more, no one knows. But we do know what we are to do in the meantime, what we are to do while he is away, what we are to do before he returns. He stresses four things he wants his followers to know as he prepares to leave them. One. We are above all to know that love is to be the key to all our relationships. Love is the way we are to relate to each other and to all around us. Not compassion, not tolerance, not forbearance. Love. We are to love one another as he has loved us. We cannot be faithful followers if we do not above all love. Everything is to be done for love, by love, through love. That is how he related to us on earth, that is how we are to relate to each other when he is lifted up from the earth and returns to the Godhead from which he was Incarnate. Love is to be so characteristic of the followers of Jesus that everyone will be able to tell whether an individual is a follower of Jesus or not by one simple and obvious criterion--if that person exhibits love; if there is evident love in his or her thoughts, words, deeds. Not goodness, not truth, not beauty, not power, not effectiveness, not fidelity, not devotion--love. Love is to be the first and greatest characteristic of Christian belief and life. The second provision he makes: He offers the assurance, the assurance anyone who truly loves another will give, the parent to the child, the friend to his companion, the wife to her husband: "You will not be alone, you are not being abandoned, I am not deserting you. Someone will be there, will be with you." A baby-sitter, a grandparent, a neighbor, a friend. Someone. You will not be alone. You are not bereft. Jesus promises a Counselor, a Holy Spirit that will come to be with the disciples, with his followers. They were promised that this Holy Spirit would always be with them. Would be sent to them. Would abide with them. They would not be alone. This Holy Spirit will, Jesus promised, teach them all things. But he will do so--and this is of critical importance--he will do so by calling to mind, reminding them of all that Jesus said. The Holy Spirit will not bring a new and contrary revelation of God. Jesus Christ, in his life, death, and Resurrection is, for Christians, the full, perfect and sufficient Revelation of God. It cannot be set aside or corrected or contradicted by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will recall, remind, not rebut. This warning, issued those thousands of years ago, before the Ascension, could not be more timely. Some parishes, some Bishops are assuming new revelations, different revelations, contrary revelations, and claiming they are newly authored by the Holy Spirit in a frenzy of refined revelation. Classic catholic Christianity says that just cannot be. The Holy Spirit teaches by recalling the revelation of Christ, not over-powering it, or thrusting it aside. We must apply the revelation in new and creative and exciting and inclusive and embracing ways. And we need the grace and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to do that. But we are not shifting about for a new revelation itself. We must apply the deposit of faith to new and unique situations, in different and unprecedented circumstances. But we must resist that which has absolutely no foundation in the original revelation. We must remain faithful to the revelation, and as we recall it, are reminded of if by the Holy Spirit, we are summoned to apply it compellingly and imaginatively to new occasions, but with accuracy and fidelity to the Revelation in Jesus, without abrogating a sure and certain faith in the Revelation of God in Christ. The third provision Jesus makes is the gift of peace that he leaves to his followers. "Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give to you. Not as the world gives." The Peace of the Lord. Christ's bequest before his departure. As love should characterize us, so peace should distinguish us. Christians resist hatred and answer it with love. Christians forswear combativeness and promulgate peace. Not, to be sure a sentimental, silly insupportable peace--an appeasement lest there be unpleasantness--our baptismal covenant adjures us "to make no peace with oppression." Nevertheless, peace is our aim and our goal because it is our gift from Christ. Wrangling and in-fighting and contempt are to be displaced by peace. That is our Lord's intention, that was the arrangement he made for us at his departure. We are to know peace, express it, champion it, defend, preserve, promote, believe in it, express it to each other. We do that liturgically well enough. That is only a start and a symbol. It is inarguable that our Lord intended more. It is intended that a characteristic, a distinction, of Christian communities, parishes if you will, is that they be at Peace. I am not advocating a phony peace, a false peace, a forced peace, but Christ's peace, the peace of the Lord. We always express and exchange this Peace each Sunday at every Mass. We always do this warmth and sincerity and joy. But we also must always remember not to demean this great sharing of the Peace of Christ. We care caring, compassionate, and as humans, chatty. We need to resist the temptation of making the Peace of Christ in the Mass into a mini-coffee hour or a chorus of conversation. Ideally, it is intended to be a time to express and re-affirm that it is our intention, so far as in us lies, says St. Paul, to live at Peace with all. A warm and well-meant Peace given to one you may wish to keep at arm’s length would be especially devout and in accord for the purposes for which it was instituted by Christ. The fourth and final arrangement our Lord made was to prepare the disciples for the actual separation itself. When someone leaves, someone we love, trust, depend on, it causes such pain that we may well interpret the leaving as directed against us, with all the consequent feelings of abandonment and desertion. No matter what the other person's actual intentions, no matter what the actual circumstances, it hurts badly. Our Lord is more aware of that than even we are. He is sensitive to those feelings, yet he calls us to rejoice, as evidence of our love, to rejoice that he is leaving to go to the Father. And when he does leave, as we commemorate at this week’s Ascension Mass and again next Sunday , those post-Ascension disciples do indeed rejoice, "returning to the city with great joy," as St. Luke notes. Because of the surpassing conviction that he is present with them, though physically absent. Confident that love and peace and faith and the Holy Spirit have forged a bond that cannot be broken by an ascension, by the loss of one we love, by distance, or by death. The Church is really serious about this one. Nothing separates us, nothing in all creation, not height not depth, things present, things to come, not life, not death, nothing, can separate us from each other and from our Lord. But our Lord recognizes and regards physical absence as a real problem for us. We are not condemned or demeaned when we grieve over being parted. But he calls us to rejoice in all of that. So this is how he would have us live, how he would have things be among us after he ascends from us, that we love one another, live faithfully in the Spirit, show forth his peace, and in everything rejoice.