Ascension of Our Lord, Cycle A

Act 1:1-11
Ps 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9
Eph 1:17-23
Mt 28:16-20


It would have been enough for God to have declared us forgiven and we would be forgiven. But He didn’t.  He took on human nature and became God incarnate out of love for us.  It would have been enough for Christ to assume human flesh and go about preaching a new morality that followed the spirit of the law rather than simply the letter of the law.  But He taught and revealed Himself and our morals through parables, healings, and preaching for three years out of love for us.  It would have been enough if Christ simply showed us how to take on suffering and carrying our Crosses daily by bearing insults and libelous claims against Him. But He carried that Cross to Golgotha suffered and died on the Cross out of love for us.  It would have been enough that He died for our sins, but then He rose from the dead, journeyed with all His disciples for 40 more days, He went and ascended into heaven out of love for us.

So after all that journeying, all of the lessons and parables, the miracles of healing and changing this into that, suffering a cruel and horrible death, resurrecting and now walking amongst His disciples for over a month re-hashing everything that He had been teaching them for the past three years…. Finally we come to the end of the journey and you can imagine the Christ’s frustration as the disciples ask: “Lord are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Why don’t they get it?!  Why don’t WE get it?  Again the disciples are causing our Lord to have a Holy Face Palm!!  After all the sermons, after all of those examples and parables, the disciples are still looking for a messiah that would liberate their people from Roman occupation and reestablish the Davidic Kingship…. That’s all they cared about and their vision fell short to see the greater picture of Christ ushering in the Kingdom of God.  But why does Christ go away?  Why does He have to leave?

We are often times so focused on the here and now: our plans, our desires, our thoughts, opinions, feelings and emotions.  And here we miss what is really going on. You would think that Christ’s leaving would be something depressing and saddening, but this is not so.  At the end of Luke’s Gospel (which wasn’t read today) after the Ascension the disciples are recounted as joyful: [He] was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.  This doesn’t make sense because we are sad when anyone or anything goes away.  If our friends or family move away or passes away do we rejoice?  (Only if we don’t like ‘em – but we still feel guilty!)  But even if we hear about a tragic accident or a natural disaster in some remote part of the world, we feel a sense of loss.  But with the disciples this account seems strange – they are happy and rejoicing!  This begs the question: why?

In the first reading: When he [Christ] had said this, as they [the disciples] were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.  I missed this line of scripture and didn’t think there was anything to it.  But as I read Pope Benedict’s interpretation in his second book Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week (from the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection), my eyes were opened.  The cloud is a theological statement.  Recall all the times in scripture that a cloud appears – “the Transfiguration: in which a bright cloud falls on Jesus and the disciples; at the Annunciation: the archangel Gabriel announces to Mary the ‘overshadowing’ of the Most High; in the Old Testament: Moses with the Israelites journeying in the desert had the ‘shadow’ of the cloud that hovered over the holy tent of God and led the people through the desert…”  All of these awesome miraculous miracles are a sign of God’s presence and when Christ ascends into the cloud, it means that He Himself is entering into this mystery that connects all of these events.

Why does the Lord go away?  The answer is simple, but the meaning is complex:  He goes away to come to us.  What do we say in the Creed?  “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory…”  He goes away to come again, and to come closer.  We are not to think that Christ simply just goes away in some remote corner of the universe.  No, He is God and so He goes away to be at the right hand of the Father so that in the Father He can be more intimately closer to us!  To think that He is simply a human person sitting in a seat far far away is to limit the fact that He is God and omnipresent – always and everywhere present to us.  He goes away so that He can be closer to us.  

If you remember the story right after the Resurrection, Mary Magdalene goes up to the tomb and she is despairing and looking for our Lord, afraid that someone has taken Him away.  Our Lord simply calls her name, “Mary!” and she tries to grab onto Him.  Our Lord steps away and says, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  It is a puzzling statement, but when we understand that the Ascension is necessary for us so that we may be even more intimately closer to Him, it makes perfect sense.  To “hold on to Him” only in human terms would be limiting Himself to her and to all of us.  To believe that Christ would be the messiah to conquer Romans and re-establish the Davidic kingdom would be to limit the Kingdom of God to merely human terms/understanding.  NO! Christ is King of the world, King of the Universe and all of Creation.  It makes me marvel how small our minds are in the context of God’s designs!  Who would have known that He ascended to the right hand of the Father, not to hide Himself, but to reveal Himself more fully?  Who would have known that His ascension allows us to be more intimately connected to Him – not just in His humanity, but more importantly in His divinity!!

My Brothers and Sisters, the feast of the Ascension of Our Lord is not just another feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ and another “cool thing” that He did, but rather it is the great moment for us to recognize Him in all His glory and the pledge of His future promise of the Resurrection.  It is for us to recognize how our thoughts, whims and desires cannot compare to His ultimate love for us.  He didn’t just resurrect Himself and ascend into heaven…. He invites us into the divine hope – to have the Faith so that we experience Him in this life and the life to come: our Resurrection!   This week and for the rest of your life, remember that we cannot be so short-sighted to only think about this world, we must go beyond and try to understand first what God is revealing to us.  We must live for the Resurrection, for our life at the End, not just to make ends meet.  Know that Christ is here and now present to us more intimately than human comprehension through the Ascension so that we too – like the disciples in Luke’s gospel be rejoicing in His Temple.