"If you love me, obey my commandments. That does not sound like the unconditional love of Jesus so often speaks. In fact it implies that if you don't do as I tell you, then

Genuine love however brings a real security into our lives. But for many people, feelings of vulnerability, insecurity, and even abuse contribute to our power of dependency.

Believing that love can bring lasting security may be hard for those who have been abandoned. Whether college students, seemingly successful and well adjusted professionals, combat veterans, homeless derelicts, or disillusioned sexual abuse victims; it is amazing how many people walk around carrying the wound of never having experienced unconditional love.

That wound, like any wound left untreated festers and becomes infected, poisoning both self-value and relationships with others. A life without love is life of desolation – literally, without the sun in the darkness.

Desolation is darkness and those who are in it feel a sense of hopelessness. Jesus promises today: "I will not leave you desolate." It is mighty easy for us to bounce words right off body armor: Promises, promises, promises, I've heard enough of promises.

That's where faith is challenged to open the door for hope-- to trust that this time it will be different. You might ask: How can I ever trust God's love when it feels like all I've ever known is a love that disappoints? Turning our life over to God involves opening the door of our heart. It involves risk on our part--the risk of being hurt.

But our God did not refuse the risk of being hurt--of being killed--of sacrificing his life in order to open that door and fill us with love--and a gift of consolation-- literally with the Sun.

This counselor--consoler—paraclete--is the Holy Spirit--the Spirit of God, himself seeking to live within us, if we will only open our heart. Every day we can have this Power of love living within us--empowering us to love and be loved--if we want it.

The love that Jesus offers today is the only love that can truly heal the "hole in the soul" that originates so early in life. It meets us at our deepest needs and overcomes our most powerful insecurities.

On Thursday, we celebrate the Ascension. Jesus’ return to the Father. Only if Jesus left, could the Spirit come and be more present to us, even more than Jesus by staying even in his resurrected body, for the Spirit dwells within us.

On Friday we begin the nine days of prayer--the first and annual Novena to the Holy Spirit. There are moments in human history when the divine meets the natural in earth-shaking cataclysmic ways and alters forever all previous existence. To prepare for such moments, the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of believers who watch and pray.

We in the twentieth century are not conditioned to waiting. We want everything instantly from our breakfast oatmeal to our Internet access. From the way we access transportation and destinations here and now to the way we now choose to deal or not deal with the ultimate frontier: death.

Waiting can be a pain. But it can also be a tremendous opportunity for letting the sun shine in and healing our wounds. The Church invites us during these days to join, as the Apostles did with Mary, who like a model mother wants her children to know that they are always loved unconditionally, accepted and protected.

When they emerged from that room after prayer, .they were the same men and women; but their lives were totally transformed. Their hurts, their pains, their fears and insecurities were healed.