We have come here today
to celebrate Our Lord’s Ascension into heaven. The world around us may well
find the idea quaint or laughable – or at least physically impossible. But it
is no less hard to believe than Our Lord becoming incarnate by the power of the
Holy Spirit in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or his rising from the dead
at Easter. The world, with the greatest confidence, will tell us that what we
are celebrating are myths and fairy stories, but they fail to get the point of
what’s really going on.
Our Lord ascends, body and soul into heaven, to the closer
presence of God the Father, and to prepare for the sending of the Holy Spirit
on his disciples at Pentecost. He who shares our humanity takes it into heaven,
into the very life of the Godhead; so that where he is we may be also. We have
seen the promise of new life in Easter, a new life which is in the closer
presence of God, which we celebrate today. We can see where it leads – what
started at the Incarnation finds its goal and truest meaning in the unity of
the human and the divine.
But
rather than seeing this as an end it is surely far better to see in it a
beginning – a beginning of the Church as we know it – a church which goes and
makes disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Our Lord commanded us. This
is exactly where we have been for nearly two thousand years. Inspired by the
Holy Spirit they did what their Lord commanded them to do and that is why we
are here today celebrating this fact.
But
like them we too are called to follow Our Lord’s commands and to share his good
news with the world so that it may believe. We are called to live lives where
our faith is enfleshed in us – it is not abstract and private, but concrete and
public. The Atheist who finds our beliefs laughable now joins forces with an
Enlightenment Rationalist who wishes faith to be a private matter rather than a
public one. This will not do: Our Lord did not say ‘Don’t do this if it’s
inconvenient’ or ‘There’s no need to make a fuss in public about me’. He speaks
as one given authority, ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’, so we can
gladly place ourselves under His authority, to do his will.
He
makes us a promise: ‘Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ He
is with us by sending His Spirit on the Church at Pentecost and ever since. He
is with us in his Word, Holy Scripture and in the Sacrament of His Body and
Blood. It is through this (and the other Sacraments of the Church) that God’s
grace can perfect our human nature – so that we can prepare to share the divine
life of love in Heaven. Where our Lord goes we can hope to follow, through his sacrifice
of Himself upon the Cross, a sacrifice made present here and on the altars of churches
all throughout the world, to strengthen us, so that we may be close to him, sharing
in the divine life of love poured out on us.
We can
hope to follow Him, and to spend eternity contemplating the Beatific Vision, caught
up in that love which is the Divine Nature, sharing in the praise of all creation
of the God who creates, who redeems, and who sustains all. We can have this hope
because Christ has gone before us, he has prepared the way for humanity to follow
him and share in the divine life of love.
Let us
prepare for this by living the life of faith, strengthened by Him, proclaiming his
truth, praying for the gift of His Spirit at Pentecost, that the Church may be strengthened
to proclaim His saving truth and the baptism of repentance, so that we and all
the world may sing the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty,
glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
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