Homily - Ascension Thursday / Sunday
Ascension Thursday, May 21, 2020 ( A ) [observed in Archdi. Cinti. On Sunday, May 24, 2020]
As we start drawing to the close of the Easter season, we celebrate today a much neglected feast: Ascension Thursday, 40 days after the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, when He ascended to the right hand of His Father in Heaven.
I say, neglected, because everyone remembers Easter – as well they should -- it’s the centerpiece of the liturgical year. Most people remember Pentecost – the fiery conclusion to the Easter season. Lots of parishes have a sea of fiery red together with those great hymns to the Holy Ghost and the stories of the Holy Spirit shooting down from the Heavens in the signs of visible flames alighting on the heads of the Disciples. But most people forget all about the Ascension.
It’s pretty key, because in many ways it is the fulfillment of the Resurrection. On Easter Day, the Lord revealed His power over sin and death. Proved to the world that He came to conquer sin and death in that astounding victory over the grave which would otherwise be so completely fearful. We can’t help but celebrate that Jesus, the Word-made-flesh and the Son of God, cheated death at the empty tomb and revealed His divine glory and power.
But at the Ascension, He revealed something about us. He revealed that He wanted to share that power with His disciples and His Church. Listen to what He says in today’s short Gospel, All power in Heaven and earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them;….”
In other words, He is going to share that Resurrection power with us, precisely through the Church and the sacraments – starting with baptism. There is no way the Disciples could accomplish this mission by their own merits. No, they’ll need the power of God to do it. We’ll talk about that more next week when we get to the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
We see a simple pattern, a blueprint, that the Lord gives to His disciples in every age, so they can get to Heaven. So they can reign in glory together with Jesus, ascended to the right hand of the father: 1) Teach the faith; 2) Baptize and lead to the sacraments; 3) Follow the commandments of Jesus and His Catholic Church. The faith is challenging, the faith is countercultural – bucking the world, especially today. But it is not complicated. That simple three part formula should be the blueprint for our whole lives. The goal and purpose of our lives, in a time when so many people are searching for meaning. 1) We need to know the Bible and the Catechism – what God teaches us through the Church. That is the very first step. If we don’t know that, we can’t know how to get to Heaven. 2) We need the sacraments, especially the ongoing ones of Mass and confession. Many people are finding that out the hard way in these very strange times of temporarily being deprived of the Holy Eucharist and where it’s a little harder to get to confession. Because we can’t receive all power from the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, the lessons in sharing in the Lord’s suffering, unless we encounter Him in the sacraments. 3) and finally, we need to follow the commandments of Christ and His Church. St. James writes in the Bible, “faith without works is dead!” In other words, we don’t just get baptized and be done with it, assuming we will go to Heaven if we just call ourselves a good person. No, the commandments of Christ are an ongoing training we need to grow more holy, to prepare to be united to the Holy Trinity.
We have the promise of Jesus Christ that He will be with us always, until the end of our earthly life, in every generation until He comes again in glory.
The Church Fathers speak beautifully about the mystery of the Ascension: Where the Head is gone, the Body is sure to follow. It means that once Christ has passed beyond the earthly limits that He imposed on Himself before the Resurrection, He could unite to all Christians baptized into His Body. So that because we are joined to Him, we too will see the glory of God the Father in Heaven in ways that we can scarcely imagine now.
To use a very loose comparison, I used to watch the show Star Trek when I was a kid. They often had episodes where some mother ship would turn on its powerful “tractor beam” and draw everything in its energy field irresistibly in toward the mother ship. That is the idea: that the divine power of the love of God draws us inexorably in to the Divine Love of the Trinity.
That’s a truth that should fill us with great hope and incredible joy. But there are two tricky things in that mystery – action items for us, if you will.
The first is that, in order to be drawn up to heavenly love of the Ascension, we have to learn to detach from desire for earthly things. That is the force that, in many ways, can drag us down. Can “break the grip of the divine tractor beam” so to speak, if we let it. We have to train ourselves to long for heavenly things, instead of just the good things of the earth.
The other of course is sin, our deliberate desire to choose our own will instead of God’s will, our desire to ignore the teaching of Jesus’ church. “Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.” What the Church teaches us now, through the Holy Father, the Bishops and the priests united to their teaching, is exactly that: what the Apostles faithfully handed on to us. Jesus made that a core part of the mission for a reason. Because when we choose not to observe that teaching, we are cutting ourselves off from that upward pull of God’s grace, turning inward so that we break that connection to where Jesus wants us to be.
But because we have the power of the Holy Spirit strengthening us, it is possible for us to stay in that beam. To stay in that path. To rejoice that the Resurrection of the Lord can be complete. That the Lord Jesus mounts His throne to shouts of joy, and we can share eternally in that joy.
The Ascension of the Lord
Lectionary: 58
Reading 1 Acts 1:1-11
In the first book, Theophilus,
I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught
until the day he was taken up,
after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit
to the apostles whom he had chosen.
He presented himself alive to them
by many proofs after he had suffered,
appearing to them during forty days
and speaking about the kingdom of God.
While meeting with them,
he enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem,
but to wait for “the promise of the Father
about which you have heard me speak;
for John baptized with water,
but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
When they had gathered together they
asked him,
“Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons
that the Father has established by his own authority.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
throughout Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.”
When he had said this, as they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
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.”
Responsorial Psalm Ps 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9
R. (6) God mounts his throne
to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.
All you peoples, clap your hands,
shout to God with cries of gladness,
For the LORD, the Most High, the awesome,
is the great king over all the earth.
God mounts his throne amid shouts of joy;
the LORD, amid trumpet blasts.
Sing praise to God, sing praise;
sing praise to our king, sing praise.
For king of all the earth is God; sing hymns of praise.
God reigns over the nations, God sits upon his holy throne.
Reading 2 Eph 1:17-23
Brothers and sisters:
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him.
May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call,
what are the riches of glory
in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of
his power
for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might,
which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead
and seating him at his right hand in the heavens,
far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion,
and every name that is named
not only in this age but also in the one to come.
And he put all things beneath his feet
and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body,
the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.
Alleluia Mt 28:19a, 20b
Go and teach all nations, says the
Lord;
I am with you always, until the end of the world.
Gospel Mt 28:16-20
The eleven disciples went to
Galilee,
to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
Then Jesus approached and said to them,
“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
