The
Ascension of Our Lord: Cycle A
Over the years, the feast of the Ascension has always been
a “tough nut to crack” for me. Not
necessarily in the facts, of course.
Those are pretty straight forward.
Jesus finished instructing his disciples after his resurrection and then
was taken up, body and spirit, into heaven where he is now seated at the right
hand of God the Father. The challenge
for me, rather, is in what the Ascension means for us. Compared to some of the
other great mysteries of our salvation—the Incarnation, the teachings and
miracles of Jesus, the Passion, and the Resurrection, to name a few—the
Ascension leaves me with something somewhat difficult to get in touch with.
Take the incarnation for instance. The Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy
Trinity, for us and for our salvation, humbled himself to become one of us, in our
human nature. This is something I can
get in touch with. Every time I
celebrate the beauty of a newborn life, every time I am delighted by the coo of
a little baby or a toddler’s joyful outburst of laughter, I get in touch with
the awesome mystery of God’s humility: that the all-powerful God of the
universe would lower himself to become vulnerable like us and place himself at
the mercy of his creatures. Yet, he
never lost anything of his power. In
spite of his apparent weakness, coming among us in a weak human nature, he remained
the all-powerful God. Thus, for us, this
is a reminder that we need not be afraid of our weakness if the power of God
dwells in us.
Or how about the mystery of Christ’s ministry on
earth? That one’s easy to get in touch
with. Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
shows us what it means to be human, to be created in the image of God as male
and female, to be created to be in communion with each other and with God. The narratives in the Gospel give us ample
material to help us see how Christ demonstrated for us how we are to live as
brothers and sisters. There is a
lifetime of fruitful meditation that can be made on this mystery alone as we
strive to conform our lives after the pattern of Jesus’ life.
Then, there’s Christ’s Passion. No doubt that since the release of Mel
Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ
few of us would have difficulty getting in touch this great mystery. I personally have never escaped a viewing of
this film without feeling the tinge of guilt knowing that our Lord was willing
to suffer so greatly and to die so that I, even in my sinfulness, might be made
clean. For us this is a reminder that we
can never take our sins for granted.
Christ suffered for each one of them and so, out of love for him, we
must strive daily to eliminate even the smallest sins from our lives.
And if you’ve ever heard the sound of a clump of dirt
hitting the top of a casket of a loved one, then you, too, will be in touch
with what Mary and the others felt when the stone closed over Jesus’ grave on
Good Friday. Their experience of
hopelessness at this apparent loss is a witness to each of us in the losses
that we experience in our lives.
Always linked to Christ’s Passion, of course, is the
mystery of the Resurrection, where the sorrow of death was converted into the
joy of new life, literally overnight. We
have touched the joy of the resurrection whenever we’ve tasted the bitterness
of despair but then were surprised by a miracle that turned that situation
around. Imagine someone you know who
needs an organ transplant. No doubt,
this friend or relative’s hopes of finding a donor are daily tempered by
doctors and others who remind him/her about how difficult it is to find a
donor. Now imagine him/her getting the
news that a donor had been found. I
imagine that must feel like God is giving him/her a new life: as if he/she had literally
been raised from the dead. The
resurrection, for us, is the enduring hope that suffering and weakness do not
have the final word in this world, but rather that God, the all-powerful, can
and will destroy these limitations for those who put their trust in him.
Yes, these are all great mysteries of the faith in which I can
immerse myself, plumbing the depths of them and letting them soak into my
bones.
Today, however, the Church presents us with the feast of
the Ascension, when Jesus, in his glorified human body, is taken up into
heaven. Now, let’s think about that for
a second. What we are saying—which is
what Scripture reveals to us—is that Jesus, in bodily form, exists somewhere…
out there… To me, that has always been hard to wrap my mind around.
Over the years, however, I’ve started to realize that the
Ascension in fact reveals something remarkable.
In order to see it, though, we have to look beyond the Ascension
itself. We have to look at how it fits
into the bigger picture. Here’s what I
mean: In two weeks, we will celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity; and I
think that if we start there, we can see just how awesome the mystery of the
Ascension is for us.
The great mystery of the Holy Trinity is that God is
perfect love within himself. He does not
need to go outside of himself for anything.
He is complete: the Lover, the Loved, and the Love they share: three
persons perfectly united in one divine nature.
Because God is perfect love in himself, he needs nothing outside of
himself: not us, not the universe, nothing.
Yet, out of his goodness and his desire that others should share in this
perfect communion of love, he created the universe and gave us the privileged
place in it for the sole purpose of freely choosing to enter into his perfect
communion of love.
In our freedom we chose against him and separated ourselves
from him forever. He never forgot us,
though, and in the fullness of time, he sent his Son to become one of us in
order to make possible again our communion with God. As Saint Athanasius said: “God became man so
that man could be made God.” After his
death and burial, Jesus rose in a glorified human
body. His resurrection was not just
spiritual, but corporal, that is, bodily.
And when he returned to the Father in heaven, he did so in that same glorified human body. Do you realize what that means? It means that Jesus now dwells forever in the
pure act of love that is the Holy Trinity in a glorified human body. Said another way: The Son of God, the Second
Person of the Holy Trinity, has always and forever dwelt in the Trinity in
spiritual form (even while he was incarnate on earth), but now, since the Ascension,
he dwells also—somehow, mysteriously—in bodily form: and not just any body, but
a glorified human body.
My brothers and sisters, this is a reason for great
rejoicing! As humans here on earth, we
know how difficult it is to experience true communion with another person. This is because all of our expressions of
unity must be mediated through our bodies.
A handshake, a hug, a kiss, giving gifts and saying things like, “I love
you.” These are all ways that our
communion with others is expressed, but also limited because we have bodies. And we know this, even more acutely now, since
this pandemic has further limited our already limited means for experiencing
communion with others. Christ’s
ascension, however, promises us that our bodies, once glorified, will no longer
be a barrier to communion, but rather
a conduit: a means for entering into
perfect communion with God. What it’s
like to be a spirit only? I can’t
imagine it. Knowing that my hoped-for
communion with God will somehow be bodily?
Now that’s something that I can get in touch with. /// Yet the Ascension
is even more than that.
You see, the Ascension is not just about Jesus returning to
heaven to mount his throne where he lives and reigns with the Father and the
Holy Spirit forever—which is an awesome mystery in itself. But it is also about how much more God
desires to give us. If Jesus remained
with us here on earth, let’s be honest, it would be pretty amazing. We know how wonderful it is to have
Christ-like people in our lives and in our world. Just look at how large of an impact that
someone like Pope Saint John Paul II had on our lives: someone who, for many,
so embodied Christ’s way of life that it was like Christ was still walking with
us. I could only imagine, therefore, how
much more wonderful it would be to have Christ himself, in his glorified human
body, here with us today. Yet that would
only be a fraction of what God truly longs to give us. Remember those words of Saint Athanasius:
“God became man so that man could be made God.”
Although it was not necessary for him to do so, Christ returned to the
Father in bodily form so that we—who can only come to him in bodily form—could
also enter into his perfect communion of love. ///
My brothers and sisters, the lesson of the Ascension for us
is a lesson in letting go. On the day of
his resurrection, Jesus told Mary Magdalene, “Stop holding onto me, for I have
not yet ascended to the Father.” Forty
days later, his disciples would need to let go of his bodily presence among
them so that they could be open to being filled with “the promise of the Father,”
the sending of the Holy Spirit that was spoken of in the first reading. This Spirit would guide and strengthen them
to work for the coming of God’s kingdom, knowing that bodily fulfillment in
this life is not the end for which they were striving, but that, following the
path of the Savior, its fulfillment would be in the glorified life still to
come.
This is the same Spirit promised to us. Thus, we, too, must heed the words of Christ
and let go of our desire for fulfillment in this life. In doing so, we will make ourselves able to endure
bodily limitations and privations in this life precisely because they point to
the glorified bodily life that awaits us who remain faithful to Christ: the one
who made this glorified bodily life possible.
Friends, as we enter this last week of the Easter Season in
which we are returning—slowly and cautiously—to our communal life, we find
ourselves in a “mini-Advent” of sorts. Before
he ascended into heaven, Christ instructed the Apostles to wait for the advent—that
is, the coming—of the Holy Spirit, who would equip them for their mission to
proclaim the Good News of salvation throughout the world. Perhaps we can spend some time this week “watching
and waiting,” examining our lives and identifying some things of which we still
need to let go so that we can make space for the Gift of the Holy Spirit. In doing so, we will not only make ourselves
ready to fulfill Christ’s commission to “go and make disciples of all nations”—a
commission that the world desperately needs us to fulfill—but we will also prepare
ourselves for that great day when we will be welcomed, body and spirit, into the
communion of love that is God: the glory of eternal life in heaven.
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 24th, 2020
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