Ascension of the Lord (Fr. Francis)
A beautiful old story tells of how Jesus, after his Ascension into Heaven, was surrounded by the angels who began to enquire about his work on earth. Jesus told them about His birth, life, preaching, death and Resurrection, and how he had accomplished the salvation of the world. The Archangel Gabriel asked, “Well, now that you are back in Heaven, who will continue your work on earth?” Jesus said, “While I was on earth, I gathered a group of people around me who believed in me and loved me. They will continue to spread the Gospel and carry on the work of the Church.” Gabriel was perplexed. “You mean Peter, who denied you thrice and all the rest who ran away when you were crucified? You mean to tell us that you left them to carry on your work? And what will you do if this plan doesn’t work?” Jesus said, “I have no other plan — it must work.” Truly, Jesus has no other plan than to depend on the efforts of his followers!
Peekaboo! It’s a fun game mothers and other family members play with their infants of a certain age. But according to cognitive development experts, the game evolved to dovetail with the maturation of infants in object permanence, their awareness that people and things continue to exist even when they are no longer seen, heard, smelled, etc. For infants at the right stage of cognitive development, peekaboo is an adventurous romp through the surprise and expectation of the reappearance of, say, mother’s face.
The New Testament’s post-resurrection stories bear abundant witness to the equivalent of cognitive disability among Jesus’s disciples. Jesus is with them, and then not — peekaboo! Jesus walked with the disciples toward Emmaus, but “their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” The Lord’s instruction to Mary, “do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended” might also imply a baffling disability.
The accounts of the Lord’s ascension only intensify the contrast between revelation and an inability to apprehend it. “They saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.” Huh? “He presented himself alive . . . by many proofs . . . speaking about the kingdom,” but “It is not for you to know the times or seasons.” Jesus expects them to know, and also not to know. At least to some extent, it’s a matter of timing: At his Last Supper, Jesus advised his disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now,” and the need for patience continues past the ascension, as “he enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for ‘the promise of the Father.’”
Perhaps the Lord’s ascension is a cosmic game of peekaboo. We who are still on the way, so to speak, are as yet simply incapable of apprehending the divine glory toward which we are aimed. As Immanuel Kant might hasten to observe, we who are still constrained by the limits of space and time, the un-transfigured body, are simply not going to grasp the nominal world that transcends such limits. And yet, as with infants and their mother, it remains important for us to know that he who departed from us is nevertheless still with us. We must somehow be witnesses to the one who has been taken from our sight. We must trust that “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” Peekaboo, indeed — divine peekaboo!
But the spiritual cognate to object permanence applies not only to the Lord Jesus, and his real presence among us, but to us as well. He who assumed our human nature when he came down from heaven did not shed it when he ascended; on the contrary, the tomb was empty because his human body and human soul were both retained by the second divine Person after his resurrection, and if he ascended to heaven even in his own body, then our human nature has gone to heaven with him.
And if Jesus can take our humanity with him, then divinization, which seems impossible to our nature, is no longer impossible. Our destiny is not to disappear into a puff of nothingness, nor be subsumed into a de-personalized nirvana, nor undergo butterfly-like metamorphosis into something of an apparently different nature, leaving behind our bodies as empty shells. Instead, our destiny is to be ourselves, body and soul, maybe even more ourselves than we now are, transfigured by divine glory, in a way we cannot now understand.
So there’s a way in which the Lord’s ascension is not only an opportunity for us to learn how he is with us in every time and place, no matter how impossible it may seem to human nature. It’s also an opportunity for us to learn that we are with him on the way to glory, no matter how imperfect or incomplete we may seem to ourselves. Which is to say, we are members of his body, the Church, of which he is the head, and since he is already enthroned in heaven, we belong there with him.
Perhaps we cannot now understand, but through revelation and faith we can nevertheless know “the hope that belongs to his call.” The ascension is our first peek into the glory he wins for us.
As Christians, we need to be proclaimers and evangelizers. The difference between preaching and proclaiming is that we preach with words, but we proclaim with our lives. Let us ask the guidance of the Holy Spirit that we may bear witness to Jesus by our transparent Christian lives.
We have a teaching mission: Jesus taught us lessons of Faith, Hope, Love, forgiveness, mercy and salvation both by living and by preaching them. Our mission is to bring them to others in the same ways. Hence, let us learn all Jesus did and taught through daily study of the Bible and the teachings of the Church, experience Jesus in personal prayer, reception of the Sacraments and works of charity, and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, convey to others Jesus whom we have experienced.
The ascended Jesus is our source of strength and encouragement: We will be able to overcome doubts about our Faith and baseless fears, anxieties and worries by meditating on Jesus’ Ascension and the lesson it teaches that we, too, are called to share Jesus’ glory in Heaven.
Fr. A. Francis HGN