24/05/2026
From a Reflection by Bishop Erik Varden, a Trappist monk
a preacher to the Pope and a most respected thinker.
“For forty days after Easter Jesus goes in and out among the
disciples. He sticks to their small group. He does not put on
compelling son-et-lumière performances over Jerusalem.
There’s no trace of triumphalism in him who vanquished
the worst of man’s enemies, death himself. He proceeds
with quietness. He converses and explains; he shares
meals; he hosts them when he performs gestures the
Eleven recognise from the Last Supper. His explicit
intention is that the Gospel should reach the ends of the
earth. But he doesn’t envisage this happening through
compulsion or shock collective impact. No, his liberating
message is to spread from soul to soul, from person to
person.
If I want to see the world transformed by Christianity, I have
to be transformed by it myself. There’s no other way. It is
useful to recall that in these times of culture war.
On the fortieth day ‘he was lifted up’ after having promised,
once again, that the Church would receive the Holy Spirit,
power from on high. A Christian isn’t called to stand
around purposelessly gazing heavenward. Angels made this
clear when they, on the day of Christ’s Ascension, told the
Eleven a little brusquely: ‘Why do you stand looking into
heaven?’ The message is clear: a pressing earthly task is
waiting. That task is entrusted to the Church until Jesus ‘will
come again even as [the apostles saw] him go into heaven’
(Acts 1.8-11).
How can the Gospel, like leaven, be kneaded into the dough
of humanity at large, to raise it? The apostles will have
pondered such things during the Pentecost Novena as they,
with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, waited to be equipped,
mystically, to face a task that seemed to them utterly
excessive.
That same task challenges us today. Like the apostles then,
we are called, now, to climb down from the Upper Room
into the streets. We are charged with communicating faith
to our world. We cannot withdraw into protected enclaves.
To be a Catholic is not to be a member of a special-interest
society or a secret fraternity. Catholics are by definition
universally minded, asked to share with generosity the
treasure committed to their keeping.”
