Ascension of Jesus

 

The readings for the feast of Ascension challenge us to look in three directions at the same time: upwards, inwards, and outwards. 

When 'looking up', we see the disciples of Jesus on the top of the Mount of Olives, our eyes are firmly fixed on the heavens where Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. His ascension gives the finishing touch to His resurrection. It is ‘mission accomplished’ for Jesus.

The mission had begun when he embraced our human condition in the womb of Mary by becoming one of us, then walking in our footsteps, traveling our roads, experiencing our pains, feeling our fears, taking on our weaknesses, embracing our limitations even to the point of coming face-to-face with death itself. His mission was to reveal the Blessed Trinity, establish His Church, work miracles, expel demons, forgive sins, preach and proclaim the Gospel. He wanted as many as possible to come to know and love Him and be one of His disciples to obtain heaven.

And just when death seemed to get the last word, and when His lifeless body was in the tomb three days. He burst forth from the tomb radiant with new life. 

Forty days later, He returned to his Father where he intercedes for all of us. Ascension is about looking up, then: looking up to heaven where Christ is gloriously triumphant, our hope and our joy.

But looking up to heaven is not enough. There is work to be done on earth. We can’t afford to be heavenly minded without an earthly good! And that’s where looking inward and looking outward come in.

St. Augustine, helps us to look inward. In a homily for the feast of the Ascension, he said, 'Christ ascended before the apostles’ eyes, and they turned back grieving, only to find Him in their hearts.' St. Paul, in today’s reading from Ephesians, speaks of looking with 'the eyes of our hearts' – coming to see the Christ who dwells within us by faith, awakening to the ways God’s grace is working within us right now, coming to know the hope that is ours, the 'surpassing greatness of God’s power for us who believe'. The eyes of the heart are able, in times of pain and darkness and grief, to see, however dimly, the hand of a mysterious but loving God at work. Only the eyes of the heart can make sense out of life’s most perplexing mysteries. That’s why we look inward to see God in the midst of what we cannot understand.

Lastly, the Ascension causes us to look outward. The Ascension is not only about meeting Jesus who dwells within, it is also about taking that Jesus out into the world where we live. Jesus told his disciples, 'Go, make disciples of all nations,'. He says the same to us. We don’t just stand still gazing at the heavens anymore than the disciples on top of the Mount of Olives did. There is work to be done, a world to be transformed, a Gospel to be preached, and we instruments of God in the world to help others get to heaven.

The Ascension reminds us, that we who follow Jesus are called to look outwards, to leave our comfort zone and plant the seeds of the Gospel in the very dirty soil of this world:  soil that is often hostile to the Gospel, or at least painfully indifferent to it. 

We are called to go some places we are not welcome, to proclaim good news to those who don't want to hear it – certainly not to a culture that has eyes only for the here and now, that often confuses freedom with license, views suffering as meaningless, and values life only when it brings pleasure. Like Jesus, we are to be a sign of contradiction in the world, for by doing so, we help others to look heavenward.

My friends, make no mistake: the Ascension is about keeping our eyes upward toward heaven and it's about inward and outward directions. It is about internalizing the Gospel to take root in us and transforms us. And it is also about taking that Gospel to the streets: preaching it by the love we give, the stands we take, the poor we serve, the justice we promote.

Dear friends, this Feast of the Ascension, we are at the same time to live on a heavenly plane and to carry our cross on an earthly plane. That’s the life of a follower of Christ, a life that’s not easy and never dull. But if we take it seriously, we’ll make our mark.

Let us ask the Virgin Mary, who was with the Apostles on the Mount of Olives and with them watched Her Son go to heaven on a cloud, we trust that someday, we too will be all those who gone before us in our heavenly home. Mostly taken from Msgr. Jameson