Jesus’ telling his disciples: A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while later and you will see me, is reminiscent of the Bride’s lament in the Song of Songs, as she longingly seeks her beloved who has escaped her grasp. As nuns and monks, we can closely identify with the Bride in our own experience of those periodic alternations between what feels like Christ’s presence and his absence. It is thus well to remember that Christ is not playing some game with us but earnestly seeking to reveal himself as he truly is. One very helpful insight offered by modern psychology, is the notion of projection and how we don’t truly see another person, but usually project aspects of ourselves onto the other. These include our prejudices, our self-centered desires, and our still distorted sense of ourselves. Accordingly, that little while in which we no longer see Jesus is in the service of his escaping our projections, so that that little while later when we do see him again, we do so with a clearer and purer vision than before. This seeing, of course, is not with the eyes of our body, but with that inner vision of the heart, which we discover is also the place he never leaves. This being so, those times of Christ’s apparent absence are summoning us to surrender our distorted and woefully incomplete knowledge of who he is and open our hearts as he gradually reveals himself. May Pope Saint Paul VI who came to know the depth of the mystery of Christ in just this way, intercede for our coming to a like knowledge of our Risen Lord and Savior.