The Feast of the Ascension - A Homily

Friends,

The Feast of the Ascension falls at a time of year when we celebrate many things.  Happy Mother’s Day.  We have a bit of snapshot of Jesus his mother in the Ascension readings.  Having your mother looking on always helps encourage you to rise to the occasion.  It is just that Jesus takes rising to the occasion to new levels.

This is also the time of graduation.  Congratulations to the graduates among us.  It is a special time of joy celebrating accomplishments but for many too it is a time of anticipation.  What will come next?  As a parent, I had for my children a feeling of anticipation.  Graduation is the sign that the next step in their life has started.   But they would have to take that uncertain next step on their own.  That feeling at graduation is of something already here but not yet fully arrived.  That feeling captures the moment of the Ascension.

The Ascension narrative in Acts of the Apostles concludes as follows:

“While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going,
suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.
They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven
will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”

I love the image.  The apostles are looking up in amazed transformation.  But then God does not allow them to stay there.  The angels come and push them onward to what they will become.  Christ will return, but you cannot stay here waiting.  We, like the disciples, are caught between the two Parousia’s, the first and second coming of Christ.  We live in the Kingdom of God, which is both started and not yet fully come. 

Mothers know this sensation.  It is the feeling of a child who will be born.  But we do not yet know what that child shall be like.  We only know that it will fill our lives.  As models of Christian hope, we revere and honor mothers.  Clearly each of our mothers has their own gifts and faults.  But they are also all experienced waiting and preparing for what will come.  This is the model of Christian behavior.   It is that openness of mothers to gift of life that we honor and respect.

So much of our life is caught in-between. We have events that are happening, but we are waiting for something else – a medical report, a graduation, a vacation, a job, the kids to grow-up.   

We are waiting for a resolution to move onto the next level of life.  It can paralyze us from action.  In the reading from Acts, I was reminded that the disciples did not jump right away into baptizing, healings, and travels to distant lands.  Instead, they gathering to contemplate the beauty of all that they had received from Christ.  Our Mass is like this.  It is a beautiful encapsulation of all that we have received from Christ.

The disciples returned to Galilee to pray and contemplate all that they had seen.  Soon they will be filled with the Spirit on Pentecost.  Filled with that Spirit, they will go out.  They will begin the work of the Church, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom.  But first, they are gathered in prayer together and prepare.  They cannot force the Spirit to come.  They cannot command the Spirit to come.  In the Gospel accounts, they are not even sure what to expect.  The disciples can only open themselves in prayer for Jesus' word to be fulfilled. 

This time between ascension and the second coming of Christ as a time peculiarly suitable and set apart for contemplation.  The beauty of the moment of ascension must have overwhelmed the disciples. 

We need to contemplate those moments in our life that are memorable: graduation, the perfect sunset, our wedding day, the moments of birth, a quiet time in our mother’s arms.  If we hold onto a transcendent moment in prayer, they begin to fit together with other transcendent moments.  It is then that I can see the arc of Christ in my life.  And arc bends me toward the coming Kingdom.  The contemplation of those transcendent moments opens us to the Spirit who will fill the gathered People of God. 

We could look at life and see the wrongness of the world.  We could live as one who has been wronged.  Yet, we are Christians who live in the moment of an ascendant Christ.  We live in Christ who has sanctified us through the incarnation and has not yet finished with his Creation. 

As humans we see intractable problems like refugees, or abortion, or war, or human trafficking.   The sight of these sins can make us lose hope.  But remember, the Kingdom is both here and not yet fully come.  For this reason, we as Christians should fill our contemplation with moments of ascendant beauty.  

Filled with those moments of hope, we are better able go and care for the people who are damaged by the sins of this age.  For where the Kingdom is not quite fully come is the exact place that the Spirit is most desperately needed.  And so, I contemplate the Ascension and pray, “Come Holy Spirit, and renew the face of the Earth.”

If this homily was helpful, please see some of my other homilies: Pentecost.

We are heading toward the Feast of Pentecost.  Lean into the celebration with these articles from Catholic365:

"The Season of Pentecost", "The Amazing Wonder of Pentecost", and "After Pentecost.  What's Next?"