THE ASCENSION (C)
(Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians
1:17-23; Luke 24:46-53)
In
today's first reading, and in the excerpt we heard from St. Luke's Gospel, we
were told how Jesus ascended to heaven as His faithful eleven apostles watched
in wonder:
He led
them out as far as Bethany, raised His hands and blessed them. As He blessed them He parted from them and
was taken up into heaven.
Just cast
your minds back to the Garden of Gethsemane and Calvary and recall how Jesus
had besought His Father to strengthen and guide Him in His hour of need:
“Father,
if You are willing, take this cup away from Me; still, not My will but Yours be
done." And to strengthen Him an
angel from heaven appeared to Him.
(Luke 22:42-43)
Jesus
cried out in a loud voice, "Father, into Your hands I commend My
spirit"; and when He had said this He breathed His last. (Luke
23:46-7)
With such
words in mind, surely we can be in no doubt about what Jesus would be doing
when, after rising from the dead, He ascended, as we are told, to His Father in
heaven:
After the
Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was taken up into heaven and took His seat at
the right hand of God. (Mark
16:19)
There at
the right hand of His Father in heaven He is, first and foremost, giving glory
and thanks to His Father for raising and exalting Him in answer to the prayers
He had made during His agony on earth; and then He is also doing that for which
He had been sent as man and for which He embraced the Cross, namely, seeking,
working, our salvation:
Christ
Who died, and furthermore is also risen, Who is even at the right hand of God,
Who also makes intercession for us. (Romans 8:34)
There,
St. Paul tells us:
He must
reign till (1 Corinthians 15:25) God has put all things under His feet, and
(given) Him as head over all things to the Church.
Jesus, in
heavenly glory at the right hand of the Father, gives glory to His Father and
intercedes for His Church and His People, for you and me, and for all who will
love and obey Him. Jesus’ prayers are
effective, and so, on earth, His most Holy Spirit is strengthening, inspiring,
and guiding, Mother Church to proclaim the Good News to all creation and lead
the fight against sin. When that work
has been completed, and that war is finally won, then God's Kingdom will be
established here on earth by the Son of Man appearing with His angels in glory
on the clouds of heaven:
Then
comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to His God and Father; then the
Son Himself will also be subjected to the One Who subjected everything to Him,
so that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:24, 28)
Then,
indeed, God will be all in all, when Jesus, the Lord of Glory, at the head of
His glorious Body, the Church, and on behalf of all creation, solemnly intones
the great eternal hymn of heavenly praise of the Father (Revelation 15:4):
(May all)
glorify
Your name. For You alone are holy. All the nations will come and worship before
You, for Your righteous acts have been revealed.
This
supreme task, duty, joy and glory, of redeemed mankind and glorified creation,
to give thanks to God for ever and ever, was inaugurated at Our Lord's
Ascension when the Son joyfully brought His own glorious Body and Blood before
His heavenly Father, with mankind having been triumphantly freed from Satan’s
chains of sin and death, and to be subsequently endowed with the life-giving Spirit
of Truth and Love; and that is the goal towards which the history of salvation
now irresistibly goes forward as to its ultimate fulfilment.
This was
beautifully understood and explained by St. Irenaeus, in the second century, in
his fight against heresies, as a modern author tells us:
"St. Irenaeus understands the Church as
an ontologically unique community, not as a collection of spiritual
individuals. The special calling of that
community is not to escape the world but to participate in its
transformation. Together with the
Ascended One, in the Spirit, its members are granted … to offer a genuine
oblation of thanksgiving on behalf of creation.
Through a living anthem of praise the Church overcomes the world's
dissipating mode of existence and its bondage to the powers of darkness."
(Ascension and Ecclesia, 70)
That hymn
of thanksgiving which has now been intoned in heaven, as I said, by the
Ascended Lord, is taken up by Mother Church on earth in a paean of praise which
is her liturgical worship, above all at Holy Mass, in the Eucharist, which very
word means "thanksgiving".
All thus
far concerns the eternal purpose and ‘factual reality’ – for believers – of the
Ascension of Our Blessed Lord.
But what
about the Personal aspect of that glorious event … how did Jesus Himself
approach, experience, appreciate, His Ascension? If we can find out just a little of that we
would have a most precious guide for our own preparation for and approach to
death.
For
Jesus, His Death, Resurrection, and Ascension were stages of one whole and
integrated process of divine Fulfilment.
We, on the other hand, tend to think of our eventual death ‘on its own’,
so to speak: for very many Christians
and Catholics death is the ‘end of life’, something that will hopefully happen
to them ‘in the twinkling of an eye’, when they are too occupied or distracted
to think about it; there are others, however, who treat death more seriously,
acknowledging its approach towards them by looking back more carefully,
repenting more whole-heartedly for past sins.
Future aspirations or expectations expressing present hope for a largely
unknown future are, on the other hand, rare indeed and somewhat airy-fairy at
the best when compared with regret for the past which is usually very real and heavy with well-known responsibility and fault.
We are
disciples of Jesus, however, and He is not only Our Lord and Master, but our
Guide and Saviour, and He approached His Death with His Ascension in view, with
the result that His Ascension had a most important effect on and imparted a
most Personally intimate complexion to His approaching death. Death was, for Jesus, not DEATH as for most modern men and women,
but a ‘transitus’, a going home to
His Father, and that outlook can and should be of great assistance to each of
us individually:
I am
going away … If you loved Me you would rejoice that I am going to the Father
for the Father is greater than I. …. The ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over Me, but the world must
know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded Me. (John 14: 28-31)
I came
from the Father and have come into the world.
Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father. (John 16: 28)
Father,
the hour has come. Give glory to Your
Son, so that Your Son may glorify You. I
glorified You on earth by accomplishing the work that You gave Me to do. Now, glorify Me, Father, with You, with the
glory that I had with You before the world began. (John 17:1-5)
This hope
to share in Jesus’ comprehensive attitude to death is no mere pipe-dream, because
Jesus prayed most particularly for us to His Father:
Father,
they are Your gift to Me. I wish that where I am they also may be with Me, that
they may see My glory that You gave Me, because You loved Me before the
foundation of the world. Righteous Father,
the world does not know You, but I know You, and they know that You sent
Me. I made known to them Your Name and
I will make it known, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them and
I in them.” (John
17:24–26)
The
Father’s love, lavished with total exuberance on Jesus, is available to us,
Jesus’ prayer assures us; let us therefore give thanks for it, return it, and
allow it to draw us with Jesus towards the Father more and more: with
ever deeper and more sincere repentance for our sins, indeed, but also with a
lovingly humble share in His, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour’s confidence and
gratitude. Jesus most markedly urged
such trust and confidence in the Father in the following message given to Mary
for His disciples
Jesus
said to (Mary), “Stop holding on to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the
Father. But go to My brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to My Father and
your Father, to My God and your God.’” (John 20:17)
Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the mystery of the Ascension of our Blessed
Lord, is a test for faith as Our Lord Himself declared (John 6:62-64):
What if
you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the
flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
By that
very token however our Lord’s Ascension is a supremely rich source of food for
Catholic life (with Jesus by the Spirit) and contemplation (of Jesus and His
Father). Here I have merely tapped open
just a little trickle of such doctrinal devotion, may your prayer and faith win
you more.
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