The readings for this feast of the Ascension have the potential for
causing spiritual whiplash. They get us looking in several different
directions - upward, inward, outward – and all at the same time. A
balancing act for sure! But our life of faith is like that, isn’t
it? It’s seldom, if ever, just one thing at a time.
The “looking up”
part is clear enough. With the disciples of Jesus on the top of the
Mount of Olives, our eyes today are firmly fixed on the heavens
where Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. His ascension
gives the finishing touch to his triumph over the power of death. It
is ‘mission accomplished’ for Jesus.
The mission had
begun when he embraced our human condition by becoming one of us,
making our weaknesses his own, walking in our footsteps, traveling
our roads, experiencing our pains, feeling our fears, embracing our
limitations even to the point of coming face-to-face with our
ultimate enemy, death itself. And just when death had seemed
to get the last word, his Father had spoken an even more powerful
word. And when God spoke that word, death was defeated - it gave up
its grip on the lifeless, mangled body of Jesus and he burst forth
from the tomb radiant with new life, and 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 right here. As someone once put it,
‘we can’t afford to be so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good!’
And that’s where
looking inward and looking outward come in. First, looking inward.
St. Augustine, in a homily for this feast, had this lovely way of
putting it: “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 wonders of grace God 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,” (St. Paul’s words
again). The eyes of the heart are able, in times of pain and
darkness and grief, to see the hand of a mysterious but loving God
at work. The eyes of the heart can make sense out of life’s deepest,
most perplexing mysteries.
Lastly, the
Ascension makes us look outward. The ascension is not only about
Jesus’ mission being accomplished, it’s not only about meeting the
Christ who dwells within us, it’s also about the launching of a
mission - our mission - the mission of the Church. “Behold I am
sending the Promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city
until you are clothed with power from on high,” we heard in today’s
passage from Luke’s gospel.
My
friends in Christ, we have – each of us – been “clothed with power
from on high.” It all started with our baptism. We can no more stand
still passively looking up than the disciples on top of the Mount of
Olives could. There is work to be done, a world to be transformed, a
gospel to be preached, and, like it or not, we are the preachers.
And preaching the gospel can take many forms, spoken and unspoken,
but, invariably, it will take us beyond our comfort zone, challenge
us to witness to our faith in Christ in places that are hostile to
it, and to people who aren’t much interested in it.
A case
in point: the horrific events that took place this past week in
Uvalde, Texas, a mere ten days after the massacre at a grocery store
in Buffalo. Our ‘thoughts and prayers’ – no matter how important, or
how sincere and heartfelt – are simply not an adequate response. I
believe our faith requires us to go further: to take action, the
kind of action that will help change minds and change laws,
out-of-touch laws that make lethal assault weapons far too available
and accessible, weapons of war that have absolutely no place in the
hands of ordinary citizens. Our faith also requires us to hold to
account politicians and legislators who shamefully put their own
power and personal gain ahead of the lives of innocent, defenseless
children. This an outrage and a scandal and we must do all we can to
put an end to it!
Dear friends, this
feast of the Ascension of Christ does call us to some serious
acrobatics: to a delicate balancing act between living at a heavenly
plane and slugging it out on this earthly plane. It very well could
cause us a kind of whiplash but, like gravity-defying circus
performers, if we do it right, it could also cause a people to sit
up and take notice, and it might also begin to sow the kind of seeds
for change that our society so obviously and so desperately needs!
Father Michael G. Ryan
|
|
