The Ascension

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“As he said this he was lifted up while they looked on, and a cloud took him out of their sight. They were still staring into the sky as he went, when suddenly two men in white were standing beside them, and they said, ‘Why are you Galileans standing here looking into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in the same way as you have seen him go to heaven’” (Acts 1:9-11).

Today is the Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord. It's a feast of divine glory. Christ's divinity is celebrated. He returns to the glory of the Father by His own power.

As He had resurrected from the dead by His own power, now He ascends into heaven by His own power. He has spent forty days recovering the apostles, strengthening their faith, confirming them in their doctrine, and giving them their mission. And now the whole mission of Christ on earth has come to an end. The Gospels end with the Ascension.

The Ascension into heaven is the sixth Article of the Creed that we say every Sunday. With His Ascension, as with many other things, Christ proves that He is infinitely beyond any witchcraft or evil spirits or astral powers or crystals or horoscopes or psychic influences or new age gurus—not only in this life, but for all time.

“In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), says St. Paul. The Church is His living body on earth. “Nobody can have God as their Father if they do not have the Church as their mother” (cf. St. Cyprian, The Unity of the Church).

For forty days, Our Lord had continued to appear to His disciples. He had arranged to meet them in various places. And now, even that has come to an end. Pope Benedict said the Ascension is “the last act of our liberation from sin” (Benedict XVI, Address, May 20, 2012).

St. Paul writes, “He ascended on high and took prisoners captive” (Eph. 4:8). Leo the Great explains that with this mystery, “not only is there proclaimed the immortality of the soul, but also that of the flesh.”

As Christ arose from the dead and ascended into heaven, so we will also do the same; we will be put together body and soul in heaven.

One of the last articles of the Creed speaks about the resurrection of the body. St. Leo continues, “Today, in fact, we are not only confirmed as possessors of paradise, but we have with Christ penetrated the heights of heaven” (Leo the Great, Homily I on the Ascension).

Pope Benedict said, “This is why when the disciples saw the Master lifted up from the earth and carried on high, they were not seized by discouragement, but rather, they experienced a great joy and felt driven to proclaim Christ's victory over death (cf. Mark 16:20).

“And the Risen Lord worked with them, giving to each one of them a particular charism, so that the whole Christian community,” said Pope Benedict, “might reflect the harmonious richness of heaven” (Benedict XVI, Regina Coeli, May 20, 2012).

St. Paul says, “He gave gifts to men. … He gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers...for the building up of the body of Christ, to the extent of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4:8, 11-13).

And so, the Ascension tells us that “our humanity is raised to the heights of God.” Our whole humanity is lifted up.

One of the key words of the whole of the social teaching of the Church is the dignity of every human person. No animal will be lifted up into heaven, no matter how great that animal may be. We are on a completely different plane.

“Every time we pray, the earth somehow joins heaven,” Pope Benedict says, “and, like the smoke of burning incense, lifts high its sweet odor, so that when we raise up to the Lord our fervent and confident prayer in Christ, it passes through the heavens and reaches the throne of God, and it is heard and answered by God” (Ibid.).

St. John of the Cross in the Ascent of Mount Carmel says that “to see the desires of our heart realized, there is no better way than to direct the energy of our prayer to the thing that most pleases God. For then, not only will He give us that which we ask of Him, which is salvation, but also that which He sees to be fitting and good for us, although we pray not for it.”

Today is a special day, which signifies many things. Christ ascended, not only as God but as man. The whole person ascended. The head of the Mystical Body has gone before us into glory, and someday we can go there too. That makes today a day of hope.

“Where he has gone,” we're told in the Preface of today's Mass, “we hope to follow, and the hope of the apostles conquers their sadness.”

Our Lord said, “I will not leave you orphans” (John 14:18).

There's also a line in the words of the Mass that talks about how we are “waiting in joyful hope” (Prayer after the Our Father). It's a great way to live. It's a beautiful phrase. Every day of our life, we're waiting in joyful hope.

With this Ascension, Christ opens the gates of heaven, and so all the good people who've been waiting in the bosom of Abraham—now they can enter into their eternal glory.

Before He goes, He confirms the apostles in their mission. He invites them to continue His work. He promises them divine power: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. … I will be with you always, even until the end of the world” (Matt. 28:18-20).

We've been called to that mission, a mission that also finds its fulfillment in unity to the Church, because that's where the divine power is: union to the Holy Father, to what he is saying, to what he is doing, Our Mother the Church.

Throughout His public life, Our Lord had also called the apostles to a certain responsibility: “Trade until I come” (Luke 19:13).

We're told in the First Reading of today that the angels wake the apostles from their awestruck state: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven?” (Acts 1:11).

It's as though the angels come along and clap their hands and say, ‘Okay, let's get down to business; there's a job to be done. What are you doing looking up at the stars and looking up to heaven? Let’s get back to work, let’s get the ball rolling.’ They're sort of saying, ‘Keep your mind on the harvest.’

Just as the angels said those words to the apostles, we could imagine the angels saying the same thing to us on a daily basis: What are you thinking about? Where is your mind? Are you focused on the great apostolic enterprise that God has left in the world, and the mission that He's given each one of us to continue, that has an expression to be found in the ordinary things this particular day—a mission that demands your prayer, your mortification, but also your action.

St. Josemaría says, “Today's feast reminds us that our concern for souls is a response to a command of love given to us by Our Lord. As he goes up into heaven,” we're told in Christ Is Passing By, “Jesus sends us out as his witnesses throughout the whole world. Our responsibility is great, because to be Christ's witness implies, first of all, that we should try to behave according to his doctrine, that we should struggle to make our actions remind others of Jesus and his most lovable personality.

“We have to act in such a way that others will be able to say, when they meet us: this man is a Christian, because he does not hate, because he is willing to understand, because he is not a fanatic, because he is willing to make sacrifices, because he shows that he is a man of peace, because he knows how to love” (Josemaría Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 122).

There are many messages contained in today's feast day. When Our Lord went up into heaven, there were only eleven apostles, because Judas had betrayed Our Lord and Matthias had not yet been chosen.

Just eleven men went to Galilee, following the message that Our Lord had given them on Easter Sunday through Mary Magdalene. They were told to meet Our Lord on the mountain in Galilee (Matt. 28:7).

What were they thinking about when they climbed that mountain? Were they thinking about Moses, who climbed Mount Sinai to receive God's covenant of the Ten Commandments?

Perhaps they were thinking of Elijah who climbed the same mountain, only called Horeb. Elijah was told he would experience the presence of God and expected the same display of power and awe that Moses experienced. Only for Elijah, God's power was in the still, quiet voice of the Spirit.

Possibly the apostles were thinking about a mountain that they climbed just a few years before, the Mountain of the Beatitudes, and the sermon that Our Lord gave there, the Sermon on the Mount.

Maybe they were thinking about the Transfiguration, the mystical appearance of Our Lord, and Moses and Elijah, also on the mountain. Certainly, they knew that there would be a special experience of God that was waiting for them there on the mountain of Galilee.

When they got to the top, they found Jesus there. They saw Him. They worshipped Him. They realized that He was the Son of God, and yet some of them were still full of doubt.

How could it be possible that this man with whom they walked and ate and talked over the last three years, whose violent death they had fled, how could it be that He could have risen from the dead and be waiting for them here on the mountain? Was it a dream? Was it an apparition?

Some of the apostles still doubted. Our Lord answered their doubts immediately: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Now go from here and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:18-19).

Our Lord proclaims the Blessed Trinity and empowers the disciples to bestow the life of the Trinity on the baptized—the greatest way to live. “Teach them to carry out everything I have commanded you, and know that I am with you until the end of time.”

The learners are now sent, and how could these eleven transform the world?

We might look at the world today and think in the same way. Where do I begin? How can things change? It's too big a task!

But the apostles knew that they could only transform the world through the power that they had received. They could transform the world through the presence of the Lord.

“Know that I am with you, always” (Matt. 28:20). We know that Christ is always with us in every apostolic endeavor.

It's not just that the disciples felt alone when Our Lord left them and ascended to the Father. The feelings of being deserted, alone in life, are very human and very real. Our Lord knows what it's like to be alone.

Our Lord—one of us, the one who died, deserted by all—felt the loss of the Father's presence and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).

He experienced the human feeling of loneliness. So it's not just the apostles who felt alone on the mountain of the Ascension.

Our Lord's answer to loneliness is His Resurrection and Ascension. No one who ever calls upon Him will ever be truly alone because He's with us always.

These are very reassuring words that Our Lord gives us. Christ is always with us. The word given to Our Lord in the Gospel, Emmanuel (Matt. 1:23), precisely means “God with us.” He never deserts us.

He didn't ascend into heaven in order to leave us. He entered, rather, into the dimension of the spiritual, so that we could experience His presence in our souls and bring His presence to the world.

The solemnity of the Ascension is not just a nice way to wrap up Easter. It's a celebration of our possession of the presence of God.

Pope Benedict liked to say, “The meaning of Christ's Ascension expresses our belief that in Christ, the humanity that we all share has entered into the inner life of God in a new and hitherto unheard-of way. It means that man has found an everlasting place in God” (Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI, Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Life).

He says it would be a mistake to interpret the Ascension as “the temporary absence of Christ from the world. Rather, we go to heaven to the extent that we go to Christ and enter into Him. Heaven is a person. Jesus Himself is what we call ‘heaven.’”

Very beautiful words from Pope Benedict. It helps us to see a little more about what this feast day is all about.

The Ascension also leads us to look forward to the great coming of the Holy Spirit. We have ten days in which to prepare, to ask the Holy Spirit for each one of His gifts, and to be close to the Spouse of the Holy Spirit; to think about how we are going to use these particular ten days to be a little closer to Him who is going to change us on the inside.

The Preface of Pentecost Sunday, the Veni Creator Spiritus, is a very beautiful hymn. You will find it in many prayer books and hymn books—a very beautiful prayer to say frequently to the Holy Spirit.

If you think about it, the Holy Spirit is the real Sanctifier. If the goal of our life is sanctity, then it makes an awful lot of sense that we pray a lot to the Holy Spirit. We have some contact with Him on a daily basis.

We have a chance to put in a sprint in these coming days as we prepare for Pentecost, and to ask Our Lord for the grace to benefit from these great feast days.

We are told in the Furrow, “Look: we have to love God not only with our heart, but with His, and with the hearts of all humanity throughout time. Otherwise, we should fall short of corresponding to his love” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 809).

Of course, St. Paul has many things to say to us by way of encouragement. He says, “I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you therefore to lead a life worthy of the vocation to which you are called” (Eph. 4:1). Unity of life: putting our faith into practice in concrete ways every day.

“With all humility and gentleness,” he says, “and with patience, support each other in love. Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together. There is one body and one Spirit—just as one hope is the goal of your calling by God, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, over all, through all, and within all” (Eph. 4:2-6).

The Ascension of Our Lord into heaven strengthens and nourishes our desires for heaven. We should always try and foster that hope of heaven.

St. Leo the Great, in a sermon to commemorate today's Solemnity, said: “Today we are not only made possessors of Paradise, but with Christ we have ascended, mystically but also really, to the highest Heavens and have won through Christ a grace more wonderful than the one we had lost” (Leo the Great, Homily I on the Ascension).

The Ascension strengthens and nourishes that hope. It invites us always to lift up our heart, as the Preface of the Mass says, and to seek the things that are above.

Our hope is very great because Christ has gone before us to prepare, as He told us, “a dwelling place” for us (cf. John 14:2).

Our Lord is in heaven with His glorified body, and also with the signs of His redemptive sacrifice, with the marks of His Passion, marks which Thomas could see and touch (John 20:24-31), marks which bring about our salvation.

The Sacred Humanity of Christ has its natural place in heaven, and He who gave His life for us awaits us there.

St. Josemaría in Christ Is Passing By, Point 126, has said: “Christ awaits us. We are ‘citizens of heaven’ (Phil. 3:20), and at the same time fully-fledged citizens of this earth, in the midst of difficulties, injustices, and lack of understanding, but also in the midst of the joy and serenity that comes from knowing that we are children of God...

“If, in spite of everything, Jesus' ascension into heaven leaves a certain taste of sadness in our souls, let us go to his Mother, as the apostles did. ‘They returned to Jerusalem...and they prayed with one mind...together with Mary, the Mother of Jesus’” (Acts 1:14).

The hope of heaven can fill our day with joy. We're told in The Way: “Foster in your heart the glorious hope of heaven” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 668).

We can imitate the apostles, who, in the words of St. Leo, benefited so greatly from the Ascension that all beforehand that had caused them fear now caused them joy.

He says, “From that moment on, their souls were fixed in contemplation on the divinity seated at the right hand of the Father; the very vision of his body was no obstacle to their believing, with their minds illumined by faith that Christ had not separated himself from his Father when he descended, and had not separated himself from his disciples when he ascended” (Leo the Great, Sermon 74).

We're also invited to look on this feast day at the apostolic mission of the ordinary Christian in the middle of the world, a mission that comes with our Baptism.

“And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to heaven? This Jesus, who was taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’ (Acts 1:10-11).

“Like the apostles, we can remain somewhat saddened by his departure. … He has gone to heaven, but at the same time, he has given himself to us as our nourishment in the sacred host. …

“We would like to go back and look at him closely again, as he sits down at the edge of the well, tired out from his journey (cf. John 4:6); or as he weeps for Lazarus (cf. John 11:35); or as he prays for a long time (cf. Luke 6:12); or when he felt pity for the crowd (cf. Matt. 15:32, Mark 8:2).

“It has always seemed logical to me that the most holy humanity of Christ should ascend to the glory of the Father. The ascension has always made me very happy. But I think that the sadness that is particular to the day of the ascension is also a proof of the love we feel for Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

“He is God made man, perfect man, with flesh like ours, with blood like ours in his veins. Yet he leaves us and goes up to heaven. How can we help but miss his presence?” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 117).

The angels came and they told the apostles that it was now time for them to begin the task before them. There was not a minute to be wasted.

The urgency of the message of the angels is something that we could communicate to our own personal apostolic task every day. “Why do you keep looking up to heaven?” It's like an urgent call to action.

With the Ascension, Our Lord's earthly mission comes to a close, and ours, as His disciples, begins. We may need to make a new beginning in that launching out into the deep (cf. Luke 5:4).

We could hear the words of Our Lord which He said to the apostles, “I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you would keep them from evil” (John 17:15).

These words remind us of our place in society. We're not meant to be taken out of our job or of our family, of the particular place where God has placed us.

Our Lord wants each of us to remain in our place, sanctifying the world from within, improving it and placing it at the feet of God.

Only in this way will the world be a place where human dignity is valued and respected, a place where men live in peace, in true peace, the peace which is so closely linked to God.

In Christ Is Passing By, we're told, “Today's feast reminds us that our concerns for souls is a response to a command of love given to us by Our Lord. As he goes up to heaven, Jesus sends us out as his witnesses throughout the whole world. Our responsibility is great, because to be Christ's witnesses implies, first of all, that we should try to behave according to his doctrine, that we should struggle to make our actions remind others of Jesus and his most lovable personality” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 122).

There was a story of three men who were running to catch a train. They were a bit late. The first man was out in front, and outside the train station, there was a man who was selling oranges. He had his oranges piled in a sort of a pyramid.

The first person who was rushing to catch the train, without realizing it—his foot touched the bottom left-hand orange in the corner of this pyramid. The oranges began to tumble all over the place, but he hardly noticed because he was running. He kept running on.

The second person who came a little bit after him had sort of noticed it a little bit, but he was very focused on catching the train, so he thought there was nothing he can do.

But the third person who was a little bit farther behind saw all this happening and also saw that the person who was selling the oranges was blind, and now the oranges were all over the place. This blind person was trying to regather the oranges.

He felt he had to stop and help this blind person to gather the oranges. He stopped and spent a few moments trying to help this man to get back his oranges.

The blind man realized there was somebody helping him, but he didn't know who it was. Suddenly the blind man said, ‘Are you Jesus? Are you Jesus?’

The man who was helping him felt a bit embarrassed: ‘Am I Jesus? I've never been mistaken for Jesus before. It takes this blind man to think that I might be Jesus.’

That led him to think very deeply about his life, about his Christian vocation, and that others are meant ‘to see Christ in me’ in all sorts of moments.

Those we live and work with, and come in contact with, should find us loyal, sincere, joyful, hardworking. We need to live as people who fulfill their duties honestly and live as children of God in the middle of the ups and downs of each day.

We need to take care of the ordinary details of courtesy—how we greet other people, our cordiality, our spirit of service—which for many are merely conventional and external things, but in us have to be the fruit of charity and an expression of a real interest in other people.

Our Lord departs, but He remains close to each one of us. In a special way, we find Him in the tabernacle, possibly in one not far from where we live, or right in front of us. We can have recourse to Him there.

If at times we can't go physically, we can always go with our heart, and ask Him to help us in all our apostolic efforts. We can tell Him that He can count on us to make His teaching known everywhere.

The apostles returned to Jerusalem in the company of Mary. With her they awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit. We too can prepare for the coming of the great feast of Pentecost, very close to Our Lady, and also with St. Joseph.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

OLV