One the most common religious experiences of people today, especially in the so-called first world, the more affluent nations of the west, is the apparent loss of the sense of God's presence in the world and in one's personal life. This experience of the absence of God is so wide spread today that in the not so distant past a whole new school of theology emerged in some Christian denominations, called the Death of God theology. However, this novel approach to theology itself was itself short lived, for while its proponents could document and describe this experience fairly well, they really had nothing more to say that would help people rediscover God in their lives. And while these modern theologians themselves may have been willing to permanently have no experience of God in their lives, most people cannot live this way. They hunger for God, whether they fully understand this hunger as "for God" or not.

Man's hunger for God is real, and not simply psychological, but ontological, that is man's whole being desires God, and the fact that man notices the absence of God in his world is itself a positive sign. Today man may not be able to name the object of this deep desire in his very being, but he knows that what he has a hunger for, in the end, is personal happiness, and not just temporary and partial happiness, but a happiness that never ends, and that is always unalloyed.

Jesus Himself spoke of this hunger in man's heart, which God alone can satisfy. He spoke of it in different ways at different times, for instance in one of his beatitudes, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied."

And then again, he says to the woman at the well: "but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst [again]". [John 4:14] And then in John's Gospel [6:35] once again, " Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst." Jesus is speaking here not of simply a physical hunger in man, but his desire for happiness, and a happiness that is unending, and so he says in this same discourse, "this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die." Jesus speaks of never dying, not to say that his believers will not physically die, but that the happiness they hunger for, which is God whether they know it or not, will never die once they find their true happiness in God, for God never dies.

But this unbounded desire for happiness, which can only be fulfilled in God, who is absolute good and eternal good, is not simply a desire for an interior happiness, and interior experience of God, for man is not only spirit, but flesh. Man is not made for bread alone, true enough, because Man is truly spirit even while flesh, but man's desire for God is not solely "spiritual" or interior, but is "spiritual" in the flesh. As Job says already in the Old Testament, "But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust; Whom I myself shall see: my own eyes, not another's, shall behold him..," [Job 19:26-27] Job is man longing to see God, to see His Vindicator, who can only be God, and Jesus is the fulfillment of his desire to see God in the flesh, standing forth upon the dust of this world. Even the Vision of God in heaven, the Beatific Vision is described in this same way, "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." [I Jn 3:2] This vision will certainly be essentially something interior, but it will also be fully human, and that must certainly include the eternal vision of Christ, which Paul speaks about in [1 Cor 13:12] "At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known." And again in [2 Cor 4:6] "For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of [Jesus] Christ." And Paul makes it abundantly clear that this "looking upon the face of Christ" is integrally connected to our Beatitude, when he says that we "are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit." [3:18]

Man desires God in desiring an unalloyed, eternal happiness, and this desire for God involves a desire of his whole being, and a desire for God's presence to his whole being. Thus we must not abandon this understanding of the desire in man when we hear Jesus in today's Gospel promise the gift of the Spirit, His Spirit, Who will remain with His disciples after he has ascended to the Father. This promise, this gift of the Spirit, is yet another example of Jesus addressing this fundamental need of man to experience God's presence with his whole being, and his promise that He will be remaining in this world. The Son of God became flesh and lived among us precisely for this reason, to personally address the message of salvation and personally accomplish the work of salvation, so that man might experience with his whole being the saving presence of God and the saving love of God in a very immediate and concrete way. Man, as man, gains access to, initially encounters the spiritual through his senses, through his human experience, even though the ultimate encounter takes place in the depths of his spirit. And so at the last Supper, just as He was about to go to the Father, which meant He would no longer be visibly, tangibly present in their midst, Jesus wanted to assure them that they would always have a fully human access to Him, and through Him to the Father, that they would be able to humanly experience His continuing presence in their midst, living on, and carrying on His saving work on their behalf, though now in a new way.

And thus it is at this critical moment of his departure that Jesus promises to remain with them always, and promises to send to them another Advocate, another companion and defender, another Divine person who comes from the infinite being of God, the third person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Jesus knew what was in their hearts, and that his departure from them would be traumatic humanly speaking. He wants to assure his disciples, then and now, that it is simply impossible that the mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of God's incarnate presence in their midst would now cease to be in our world, that the work of Jesus would no longer to be something visible, or that men and women were no longer to have a visible, tangible, human experience of God in their midst. Christianity was not to become transformed into something purely "spiritual." No, the gift of the Spirit was precisely made to enable Jesus to continue His visible, yet truly spiritual mission of salvation in this world, until the end of time. Salvation brings about the spiritual transformation of the whole man, beginning with the rebirth of the soul in God's Grace, but this spiritual, invisible rebirth is accomplished, nonetheless, through the visible action of Jesus, and will in fact culminate only in the spiritual transformation of man's body itself, in the Resurrection at the end of time. It is precisely, and somewhat paradoxically the case, that the gift of the Spirit, is what makes it possible for Jesus to remain in their midst according to the mode of the Incarnation, that is, for God and his spiritual gifts to be mediated in a visible, tangible way, a human way, the way of the Incarnation. Jesus says, "But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you." [Jn 16:17] For unless the Advocate is sent, they will no longer be able to recognize His continuing presence in their midst, his work, his dwelling in them.

Jesus, then, speaks quite clearly about this continuation of the mystery of the incarnation, God becoming visibly, tangibly present as He saves us. In today's Gospel He speaks of the gift he will make of the Spirit, and of the Apostles experiencing the Paraclete, recognizing the Spirit, and of recognizing Jesus Himself who reveals His own interior presence only to the disciple who loves him and keeps his commandments. But this experience of Jesus is not to be merely an interior experience, but is an experience of Jesus which becomes visible in a new way. Given the interior gift of His spirit, who guides us into his truth, we are also to experience the presence of Jesus in a visible way also, in the Church, in each other. Thus Jesus becomes visible in those who truly share His spirit, for it is the Spirit who empowers us to keep his commandments, and in doing so, we manifest to each other the presence of Christ and His Divine Love in our souls. Thus Jesus can be seen in all those disciples who truly love God and obey Him, just as He reveals Himself interiorly to the person who truly loves Him. "If you love me, you will keep my commandments," He says at the beginning of this Gospel, and then he adds at the end, "Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me." But the Christian does not keep the commandments without Christ and His Love being already present in Him, that is, without the Gift of the Spirit who abides in Him and empowers Him to obey Christ. The Spirit is God's Love, and God's Love becomes the power of loving within us, enabling us to keep the commandments, not out of fear, but as an act of supernatural love of Christ.

The very keeping of the commandments then is a visible manifestation of Christ's presence through the Spirit of God dwelling within man. For without the Spirit, without Christ, no man can keep the commandments for long, and certainly cannot keep them out of the motivation of love, rather than fear of God. Thus the man who keeps the commandments discovers Christ living within Him. And every disciple who keeps the commandments out of love, in the Spirit of Love, becomes a visible sign of the presence of Christ in the world, a living extension of the mystery of the Incarnation, making grace visible through a life of virtue and goodness of an altogether different order than we discover in a world without grace.

Likewise, it is through the Spirit that Christ becomes visible in his saving activity through the sacraments. The sacraments, because they are instruments of the Spirit, are the continuation of the visible mediation of God's saving grace that began with the incarnation itself, where God became visible through the actions and life of Christ. Thus through the saints and through the sacraments the human experience of God's saving presence and activity continues to the end of time.

Thus salvation is something profoundly spiritual, and profoundly human at the same time. God continues to mediate the spiritual, His presence, His Life, His activity through the visible, the historical, the human form of mediation. But man can only encounter the God who makes himself a part of man's history and who assumes man's nature, as he always has, through the vision of faith. If modern man has lost the sense of God's true presence in the world, it is not because God has abandoned the world, left us orphans as Jesus says, but because modern man has lost completely or has greatly diminished vision of faith. Man needs to ask for this gift first, the gift of faith, and then he will see God once again in his world.

May is the Month of Mary, and she above all was the woman of faith, a woman of prayer, and the woman who followed the Word of God most perfectly. As her prayer was generated through the contemplation of the incarnate mystery which took shape in her womb and grew in her home, so fittingly she has given us a prayer which generations of Christians have found most helpful in keeping the presence of God very concrete in their daily lives, and that is the Rosary. In this now ancient form of prayer, the concrete mysteries of Jesus are presented to us for our enrichment as disciples; the joyful mysteries of Jesus, the sorrowful mysteries of Jesus, the glorious mysteries of Jesus. These meditations keep before our minds the way God chose to be visibly part of our life, and continues to share in our joys, our sorrows and our triumphs. They help us to see Christ who remains with is always.

Rediscovering the power of this beautiful form of prayer is one way to rediscover the closeness, the presence of God in our lives. If we share the Spirit, and we pray with the prayer of the Bride, then we will more easily come to recognize the presence of the Lord in the Sacred Word, in the Sacraments, in our souls and in others, especially the saints. As Jesus promised in today's Gospel, He has not left us orphans, has not, and never will abandon us. If we seek his will in all things, if we seek the gift of His Spirit, if we love Him more than ourselves, and put that love into action by obeying his commandments, then He will reveal Himself to us once again.

Turn then to Mary, and learn from her how one draws close to her Son. She will teach you how to pray, because she is in truth your mother, and you, like Jesus, are in truth her child.