The Comfort of the Comforter
At his Ascension, Christ promises that his departure is not really a departure. Rather, as he tells his disciples, he is leaving so he may draw even closer to them than before. As Acts 1 tells us, Jesus says, “you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. . . . You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
The Holy Spirit is also known by the name of “Comforter.” As a people living in a wildly uncertain, often frightening time, we are most certainly a people in need of comfort. But “comfort,” in the sense that the Holy Spirit is referred to as “Comforter,” is not necessarily intended to make us feel better, set us at ease, or take away our pain.
When the Holy Spirit does come at Pentecost, he will come like wind, like fire, like water. He will come in power and mystery. He will renew the inner hearts of his people, radically recreating us by giving us his own life. When the Comforter comes, he will bind us to himself and grant us his peace. He will compel us to go forth into the world as witnesses of the new life we’ve been given, witnesses to the peace that fills our lives. We will be called to “be witnesses . . . to the end of the earth.”
If the example of the first disciples – many of whom were brutally martyred – is any indication of what this looks like, it seems clear that to be indwelt by the Comforter and follow the call to a life of witness is anything but “comfortable.” It is often a thankless, painful road.
We need to be comforted so we might endure this call – true comfort, Holy Spirit comfort – which is to say we need to be radically strengthened in our inner being. We need to be comforted not so we can escape our suffering, but so we can become like Christ as we receive it.
Ascensiontide is an in-between time. Christ has promised to send the Comforter to us, but Pentecost has not yet come. We find ourselves gazing at the sky into which he rose; forever changed by the Christ we witnessed in Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide; and, in his apparent absence, suddenly held again by the strength of his promise.
These ten days are anything but “comfortable.” We cannot skip them. The waiting we do here changes us in important ways. Ascensiontide is, like Advent and Lent, a season marked by longing, ten days in which we must practice our desire for Christ to come and give himself to us again. It is an opportunity to practice asking for the arrival of his Spirit, and to submit ourselves to the wisdom of the comfort offered by the ultimate Comforter – a comfort that equips and strengthens us to inhabit our witness with patient sorrow and holy courage.
Perhaps, then, we might spend these ten days asking the Spirit to reveal how he will comfort us. To what has he called us? How does he strengthen us to enter and inhabit that vocation? Whatever it is, when he comes to us we will find the Comforter there, with us in our difficulty, upholding us with his peace.