The Ascension of our Lord Year A 2023

The Eighth Sunday of  Eastertide A  

The ASCENSION of OUR LORD (A)  

   (Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-2)

 

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. 

All power and authority has been given to Jesus; but He is going away, He is not going to use them Personally in the sight of the world.  The glorious work of making disciples of all nations is to be accomplished by His disciples, for His Church.

That was in accordance with a consistent practice of Jesus, Who most deliberately willed to lead us to become -- in Him -- true children of God, able to love and glorify the heavenly Father had Who sent Him, and called us to faith in Him!  Yes, Jesus so consistently sought to glorify us and rejoice His heavenly Father that He, apparently was willing to let Himself disappear somewhat into the background:

On that day you will ask in My name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you.  For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have come to believe that I came from God. (John 16:27)

Thus He lived-out the words He would later speak to His Father (John 17:10):

            All Mine are Yours and Yours are Mine and I am glorified in them.  

Our modern world’s rejection of Christianity is not because of Jesus Himself, His human personality and character are much admired by unbiased students of His life.  No, the world’s great trouble with Jesus is that He loves us too much!  For, having lifted from our shoulders the burden of our sins, He now wills to share His divinity with us!!  Yes, He actually wants to make us divine in Himself, so that we might thus know  and experience something of the transcendental beauty and joy of the all-embracing and totally self-giving love, which is Divine LIFE!

And the supreme question now, dear People of God, as we prepare to celebrate His Ascension, is of course: what sort of relationship do we – you and I personally – want to have with the Risen and Ascended Lord Jesus?

First of all, notice that the Risen Jesus was glorious in the Spirit; He ascended to His Father in the power of the same Spirit Whom He, Jesus, was to bestow, as He had promised, upon us for our salvation!

Secondly, notice the  fact that ‘Jesus is risen’ shows that the diabolical power of sin -- through which death had enslaved mankind -- could not hold Jesus the Perfect Man under its bonds.    Jesus, by rising from the dead, destroyed sin’s dominion over all those who – at the Father’s call -- will believe in Him and in the God Who raised Him.   Sin has no power over us who believe that Jesus our Brother is, as St. Paul proclaims:

Lord of both the living and the dead.

Finally, of course, ‘Jesus is risen’ means that, because Jesus ascended with whole-hearted longing and love to His Father in heaven, we too, who want to become His  true disciples can most delightedly embrace those Easter words of St. Paul:

If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.   When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1–4)

Dear People of God, are you willing to trust Jesus totally with your future?

Or are you sometimes puzzled by so many nominal Catholics and Christians who have thrown in their lot with those denizens of modern culture who apparently find such joy in communal excitement and commitment, such ‘fulfilment’ in their experience of personal power and influence, and such satisfaction in the comforts of plenty and the  pleasures of sex?   After all, they say, what greater happiness and well-being could they or any human being want or need here?

That, dear People of God, is precisely the point where such people can no longer speak meaningfully to us Catholics and Christians who are believers in God.  For God alone can give fulness of life, happiness, and well-being, because He alone is the Author of true life, the fulness of which is promised and reserved for us in heaven, in and through Jesus Christ – perfect God and perfect Man -- and which only the Most Holy Spirit can confer on us, in Jesus, for the Father.

Here, Saint Paul’s prayer in our second reading is so beautifully appropriate:

May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a (S)spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of Him … that you may know what is the hope that belongs to His call, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power for us who believe, in accordance with the exercise of His great might which He worked in Christ.

Paul is telling us that the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus is the model and power-centre for our own rising with Him to the Father Who originally called us.    How, is that holy power to be activated in our lives for us?

We cannot, like Magdalen -- clinging to the Jesus of her earthly memories -- be ever seeking and asking of Him earthly blessings and psychological satisfactions in our journey through life; we have now to learn, with her, how to love Jesus aright as our Ascended Lord, for did He not say to her:

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)

Yes, dear People of God, the key to activating the power of Jesus’ Ascension in our own lives is perfectly simple, as unquestioning Mary Magdalen found; namely, trustful and confident obedience to Jesus the Risen Lord, by His Spirit ever at work in Mother Church and in our Catholic and Christian conscience!!

And that requirement of obedience is the ultimate reason for the world’s hatred of Jesus: for despite the fact of Jesus’ sovereign love for us and the eternal salvation He offers mankind, it all -- of its very nature -- involves our obedience; and human, ultimately devilish, pride is at the root of all our spiritual weakness, waywardness, and wickedness.

Behold I am sending the promise of My Father upon you; stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.   (Luke 24:49)

Satan had apparently ruined the Father’s creation of free human beings made in His own likeness, by persuading Adam and Eve (human beings of lesser dignity than angelic beings) to, as it were, manifest their weaker nature by allowing themselves to be led astray from God’s good will by Satan’s duplicity: the idea of free human beings in the likeness of God was thus over from the very beginning, they abused their freedom!

But no!!  The Son (Word) of God, for love of His Father, wanted to become a human being -- thanks to the Immaculate Virgin Mary of Nazareth – to become Perfect Man and perfect God, freely and absolutely devoted to His heavenly Father.   And then, by the Gift of their Most Holy Spirit … to enable other human beings to freely, for love of Himself, let themselves be formed as other Christ’s, and thus adopted children of the Father, for the greater glory of God, for mankind’s eternal joy and total fulfilment, and to Satan’s eternal chagrin and humiliation.

Thus God wants to enable us to deliberately and whole-heartedly embrace the eternal promise and sublime fulfilment of our being which is in Jesus, perfect Man and perfect God; Who, having most innocently shared our humanity to the full, even, indeed, to tasting the deepest dregs of its suffering-for-sin, still wants to draw us back to Himself and,  as members of His Body, able -- by the power of His Spirit -- to share in His divine glory and  become adopted and true children of the heavenly Father.

Let us subsequently trust not in ourselves, for the work of salvation is ever on-going and it calls on us who attend, try to participate in and live-out-to-the-full, Mother Church’s Liturgy, to pray most sincerely for the coming of God’s Gift of His Most Holy Spirit on Mother Church anew that she might receive, in yet greater fulness, heavenly wisdom and power for the service of Jesus’ Light and Truth against the darkness and deceit threatening the world.  Let us also invoke the Holy Spirit of Jesus into our own hearts, to help each of us learn to better say ‘no’ to ourselves and to all sin; and – in the measure of His unstinting goodness and in accordance with His own good time -- to guide us, lead us, form us for closeness, yes, even intimacy, with Jesus our own Flesh-and-Blood Lord and Saviour, and for love of the heavenly Father Who sent Jesus to us and calls us to Him in the bond of His most Holy Spirit.