Sunday, May 28, 2023

EMPTY PROMISES

When you think about it, our world is full of empty promises -- and not just the obvious ones from advertisements about losing weight or attracting members of the opposite sex. Everything in our culture seems to be based on promises: you will be happy if you have possessions, power, prestige, pleasure, or whatever else the world can offer you.

But humans have learned from experience since the earliest days of history, that none of these things can give us ultimate satisfaction, ultimate meaning. Yet still, we find ourselves in headlong pursuit of these things, setting ourselves up for inevitable failure each time.

Was it Saint Augustine who said something like “there’s a God shaped hole in the center of each of us, and the only thing that can fill it is God?.”

A moment's reflection can reveal the fatal flaw in the promises made by the world: The "world: is bounded by time and space, so by definition there can nothing outside that time-space box, nothing beyond death, nothing "ultimate": The world of the senses is all that we get. So naturally, anything that the world promises cannot be "ultimate" but only passing. At the last supper, Jesus reminds us, that we are not of this world, and that its promises will never be fulfilled, never make us who we are meant to be.  This is why Augustine wrote that God has made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in him. Everything else is empty promises.

Today is Pentecost Sunday, when we celebrate that the disciples were “filled with the Holy Spirit.“ They

and those who listened to their preaching, were filled with the spirit of the risen Christ. And this spirit can never disappoint, because it is the spirit of the Easter mystery. The Paschal mystery in which we believe, never disappoints us. Even in our worst moments of sin, or suffering, of disappointment, or depression, the spirit is there with us to shed light in our darkness, to give consolation in our suffering, and to bring life out of death itself. We Christians don’t see this as an empty promise but as the central mystery of life, pointing us to life beyond the grave. .

We are Easter people. Christ has already risen from the dead, and we have already risen with him. The promise is that he will come again to finish the job. But this again is hardly an empty promise.

What can ultimately fill our yearning hearts? We know the answer, and so on this feast of Pentecost we pray:

“Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful!”

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