Stay! (Until You Leave)

A Homily for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

In sending out his disciples, Jesus gives a very practical instruction: “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave.” This phrase is so practical and so straightforward we might be tempted to overlook it. But I suggest to you today that this instruction from Jesus is not just practical advice but rather it gets to the very heart of discipleship. To be sent by Jesus requires that we learn how to “Stay, until we leave.”

Whenever I teach prayer to our novices I will often talk about the power of presence and as an example I use a story about my parents.

In the years approaching their 50th wedding anniversary, many years after the last of 7 children left the house, my parents developed an evening habit. Both of them were avid readers. So in the evenings they would both sit in the living room, no T.V., no radio, just sit silently in the living room, in their favorite chairs (Dad’s was a recliner; Mom preferred the gliding rocker) and they read!

A year after their 50th wedding anniversary my Father died of cancer. In the months after his death I asked my Mom how she was doing and she replied: “During the day I’m fine; it’s in the evenings when I notice most that he is gone.”

In those evenings my parents weren’t having in-depth conversations, they weren’t watching T. V. or listening to their favorite music. Rather they sat in silence and read different books, in different chairs, in the same room. It wasn’t about what they did it was about the reality of a shared presence that was foundational. Their marriage taught them how to “Stay, until you leave.”

You might recall the image from John’s gospel where Mary of Bethany, breaks the alabaster jar of expensive spikenard and recklessly pours it on Jesus’ feet, thereby anointing him for his own upcoming death and burial. And the evangelist writes: “The house was filled with the fragrance!”

To be sent by Jesus; to be disciples of him who loves us to the end, is to learn how to, first and foremost, sit in just such a saturated presence. St. Paul tells us today: Christ chose all of us from before the foundation of the world. As people who share that same foundational call, we in turn are sent to share that foundational Divine presence with others. Our own unique individual human presence is fragrant with the Divine Presence. When we learn to “Stay, until we leave” we leave behind something greater than just our own presence because our presence itself testifies to the presence of Christ which is eternal.

As disciples chosen by Christ before the foundation of the world, we participate everyday in that foundational presence. When my Father died, my Mother missed most his presence and for her, that absence eventually opened to a presence which was much more profound.

Some of the most fundamental words of Jesus in John’s gospel are: Abide, Dwell, Remain. That is the primary task of every disciple: Learn to Stay, Abide, Dwell, Remain and when you leave, as we all must eventually leave, your presence will not only remain but will be transformed into a living presence of the Divine. An eternal presence that can never be lost.

The spiritual writer, Ronald Rohlheiser, writes about how, eventually, we are all called to give even our death away as a gift for others. Rohlheiser writes of the experience people have after the death of a loved one, how that loved one “comes back” to them now freed of the limitations that hampered them in this life and can now be with them in a way they never could before. It is a resurrection presence. Yes, the reality of death remains in this realm of existence, but it can’t restrain the power and presence of the Resurrection which is real and which is now.

To be sent by Christ, and we all have been sent by Christ, for he chose us from before the foundation of the world, isn’t first and foremost about what we do, but rather it’s about who we are and how well we each learn to “Stay! Until you leave.”