THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD
2 JUNE 2019
When
we entered into this Liturgical Year on the First Sunday of Advent, we began
hearing from the Gospel according to Luke.
We were told to wait. The Angel
had announced to a young virgin that she would be the mother of God. As Mary accepted this invitation and became
the Handmaid of the Lord, we waited for four weeks to hear the angels announce
that the Lord had been born in Bethlehem.
Today, we hear from Luke’s second volume, the Acts of the Apostles. He tells us that it has been 40 days since
the two men dressed in white had told the women at the tomb that the Lord had
been raised from the dead. During those
40 days, the risen Lord had revealed the Paschal Mystery to his disciples. They began to understand that Christ had to
suffer and be raised from the dead on the third day. They realized that the promised kingdom of
God had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
They embraced his message that they must preach repentance, if the
kingdom would become a reality in their lives.
Today they
listen to that same risen Lord, as he tells them that he will depart from them
and return to the right hand of the Father.
Using the language of the Letter to the Hebrews, he will enter heaven,
the sanctuary not made by human hands.
Unlike the high priest who entered the sanctuary of the Temple to offer
sacrifice for the sins of his people, Jesus has been both the priest and the
sacrifice. His gift of total self-love
will never need to be repeated. Instead
of sending them on their mission immediately, he tells them to stay in
Jerusalem and wait. Then those two men
dressed in white repeat the Lord’s message.
They must stop looking up to the sky and wait in Jerusalem.
We
celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension, because it is integral to our
understanding of the Paschal Mystery.
The Ascension heralds a new era. The
era of the earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth has come to an end. Now a new era is about to begin. As the disciples wait in Jerusalem, they have
no idea of how long that wait will last.
But because we have read the story of the new era of the Church from
Luke’s second volume, we know that their waiting ended when the Holy Spirit
broke through the doors, just as the risen Lord had broken through the doors of
their locked room on the day of the Resurrection. They could not begin their work of preaching
the Kingdom of God until they had received the Holy Spirit. Filled with the Holy
Spirit, those first disciples continued the work of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Messiah.
Spirit, those first disciples continued the work of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Messiah.
We are
waiting to celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit next Sunday on the Solemnity
of Pentecost. With the gift of the Holy
Spirit, we are given the same mission of proclaiming the kingdom of God and
embracing the need for our own conversion – our own turning more completely to
that kingdom already in our midst. The
Ascension reminds us that the risen Lord is not absent, but more present than
we can ever imagine. Through the power
of the Holy Spirit, he is present in the Sacramental life of the Church,
especially in this Eucharist under the forms of bread and wine. He is present in our darkest hours, when we
face those dark holes of loss and pain and death. He is present whenever two or more gather in
his name.
We are also
waiting for him to come again in glory.
We have no idea how long it will take until he comes again. But we know that in the meantime, we cannot stand
around and look up into the sky. Through
the power of the Holy Spirit, we reflect his presence in the way we treat each
other with love and respect. Nourished
by the Eucharist, we can obey his command to love as he has loved us, to wash
each other’s feet, and to give ourselves in loving service. We are part of this era of the Church, and
the Mystery is entrusted to us.
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