Homily: The Ascension of the Lord – Cycle C
Friends, today we celebrate this great
feast of the Ascension: the final, culminating act of our redemption. This is
not, of course, the crucial act: that was Jesus’ Passion, Death, and
Resurrection. Rather, it is the
culminating act: the ultimate reason for which Jesus took on our human flesh;
and that is, to re-unite our humanity to God. This, of course, is a joyful
thing. I mean, just think about your humanity for a moment. Think about what
happens when you don’t take a shower or a bath for a couple of days. Think
about changing diapers on babies or when they spit up on your shoulder. Our
humanity—as we experience it in this world, at least—is a messy (and, quite
frankly, often gross) thing. Yet the Divine Son of God, the Second Person of
the Holy Trinity, took on our humanity, in all its grossness, suffered all of
the worst things that it can experience in this world, and glorified it in his
resurrection so that it could be restored to its perfect communion with the
Holy Trinity: which is to say, into an existence of perfect and eternal bliss.
This is something astounding! And if you aren’t astounded by this, then you
should be! In the early centuries of the
Church, Christians argued about the true nature of Jesus’ humanity: Did he
truly have a human nature, alongside his divine nature, or did his divine
nature simply “reside” in a human body while he walked on earth? The fact that, after his resurrection, Jesus
still had a human body, made of flesh and bone, and that he took that body with
him as he ascended into heaven shows us, those early Christians argued, that
Jesus’ divine nature was truly united to a human nature; and that this human
nature, while always remaining distinct from his divine nature, can never be
separated from him. It’s truly
mind-blowing to think about this because, even with all of our scientific
achievements, we have no way of conceptualizing how our human bodies can exist
outside of space and time.
Nevertheless, what Jesus proved for us
when he ascended in his human body is that our bodies are noble, and that they
have a noble purpose. In fact, I would
say that our bodies are truly sacramental, in nature. If you remember your catechism well, you’ll
remember that a sacrament is an “efficacious sign of grace”: it’s something
perceivable by our senses that makes imperceivably things happen. For example, in baptism, the person is washed
with water while invoking the Holy Trinity, which effects the grace of
the cleansing of the person’s soul from sin (Original Sin and any personal sin)
and marking it permanently for God. In
other words, the physical, perceivable washing makes a spiritual, imperceivable
washing happen. Thus, another way to
define a sacrament is to say that it is “a visible sign of an invisible
reality.” A sacramental, in this
sense, is something that does a “sacrament-like” thing.
Our human bodies are sacramentals
in that they are visible signs of invisible realities. What is that “invisible reality”? The presence of a human soul. Subconsciously we get this, because whenever
we see what appears to be a human body without a soul, we know it’s something
less than human, a monster, right? (Any “Walking Dead” fans out there? Zombies
are monsters because they are human bodies without souls.) Our bodies are more
than just signs, however, they are integral parts of who we are as human
persons. This we also understand,
fundamentally, because when someone does violence to our bodies, we rightly see
it as an attack on the person, who cannot be known except through his/her body.
All this is to
remind us today that the restoration of our communion with God could not be
accomplished through spiritual means alone: it had to happen with our
bodies. This means that, any restoration
that could have been effected without bodily communion would have been
incomplete. Jesus came, however, to
restore our communion with God completely: thus, the Incarnation; the
Passion, Death, and Resurrection; and, now, yes, the Ascension. Real communion with God requires our
bodies, as well as our soul.
This message is also why, I think,
that the Church has transferred the celebration of this great feast to
Sunday. Technically, 40 days after
Easter happened last Thursday, but we celebrate the Ascension on Sunday so that
the vast majority of us might be able to celebrate this important feast. It is the feast of the culmination of our
salvation and a reminder that our human bodies have a noble purpose. The world tells us that our bodies are
something to be used and thrown away.
Through Jesus, God reveals that our bodies are valuable and necessary.
These valuable bodies are not meant to
be static, however. Rather, they are
meant to move. In Luke’s Gospel
“movement” is the sign of a disciple: that is, someone responding to
grace. If we think about the parable of
the Prodigal Son, we see that the prodigal responds to grace and moves to
return to his father, and the older son stands still—he will not move—and refuses
his father’s graces. This is a common
theme in Luke’s gospel. Thus, it feels a
little weird when, at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke writes
that Jesus told the disciples to “stay and wait”. This, of course, is only to prepare them for
the next big movement that will come with the arrival of the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost: then they will move—and move big time—to take the Gospel message to
the ends of the world. We, who celebrate
this feast, must be ready to move when the Spirit comes to us.
Friends, Let’s use this time to
meditate this week on this great mystery of the Ascension: that through
Christ’s body, which has entered the eternal sanctuary in heaven on our behalf,
we too will one day ascend bodily into full and perfect communion with God in
heaven. As we do, let us also pray and
prepare to use these bodies that we have been given not only to be outward
expression of ourselves—the visible signs of our invisible souls—but also to be
expressions of God’s love that has been poured into our hearts: in other words,
the visible sign of that invisible reality.
In doing so, we will be proclaiming God’s kingdom: the kingdom of heaven
to which all men and women are invited and over which rules Christ, our risen
Lord and king. Alleluia!
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN
– June 1st & 2nd, 2019
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