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To
celebrate the Ascension may seem strange. It is, after
all, about an ending. Saying good-bye can be awkward, is
sometimes difficult, and is often sad. His ascension
means the disappearance of Jesus. Up to then he was
visibly present with his disciples and now he is, it
seems, to be absent. Why be joyful about this? Why think
of it as something to celebrate?
At
the mid-point of his gospel Luke writes, 'when the days
drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his
face to go to Jerusalem' (Luke 9:51).
His 'being taken up' refers to his crucifixion, the
moment in which he was 'lifted up from the earth to draw
all people to himself' (John 12:32). It can also be
taken to refer to his resurrection from the dead. And it
is complete in his exaltation to the right hand of the
Father. He has been taken up to the place of glory that
is eternally his.
In
the Temple at Jerusalem the High Priest went up into the
Holy of Holies once a year, on the Day of Atonement,
carrying the blood of sacrificed animals. Through him
Israel asked forgiveness of the Lord and a renewal of
the covenant. The only other person allowed to enter the
Holy of Holies was a new King, on the day he was
enthroned. The psalms and other texts of scripture speak
about the king going up to a place of honour in the
presence of the Lord, the God of Israel.
This is important background for understanding the
Ascension of Jesus. He is our high priest who enters the
Holy of Holies, not the earthly one in Jerusalem, but
the great and perfect one in heaven. The blood he
carries is not that of animals but his own blood, which
is offered once and for all to gain 'an eternal
redemption' (Hebrews 9:12). Seated at the right hand of
the Father, enthroned as judge of all, Jesus is our king
and our high priest.
Ascension Day is, then, the original feast of Christ the
King. Because of his love and obedience the Father has
exalted him and given him 'the name above all other
names' (Philippians 2:9). We celebrate his victory, and
its meaning for us, the fact that he is become 'the
source of eternal salvation for all who obey him'
(Hebrews 5:9). As the prayers of today's Mass put it, he
has been 'taken up to heaven to claim for us a share in
his divine life' and 'where he has gone, we hope to
follow'.
The closing verses of the Gospel of Luke are read for
Ascension Day this year. Although Jesus 'withdrew from
them and was carried up to heaven' the disciples
returned to
Jerusalem
'with great joy, and were continually in the temple
blessing God' (Luke 24:53). They understood, it seems,
the meaning of his exaltation. They await the gift of
the Spirit, the power from on high that Jesus will send.
Jesus had said to his disciples, 'if I do not go away he
(the Advocate, the Holy Spirit) cannot come to you'
(John 16:7). Exalted to the right hand of the Father he
sends the Holy Spirit as he had promised. This is why we
rejoice at his departure, because his return to the
Father establishes a new bond between heaven and earth.
In sending the Spirit, Jesus fulfils his promise to
remain with us always. We become his physical presence
in the world, his body alive with his love. If he is
with us in the Spirit, where can we be except with him
in the same Spirit?
Our lives have been configured to this great paschal
mystery of Jesus, to his death, resurrection,
exaltation, and sending of the Spirit. Through baptism
we enter sacramentally into the tomb with Jesus so that
we may also rise with him as members of his body.
Through confirmation we enter sacramentally into his
promotion to the right hand of the Father to become
temples of his Spirit and witnesses of his grace to the
ends of the earth. |
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The Ascension of
the Lord
Fr. Malachy O'Dwyer
1. Both the Gospel and first reading are accounts
written by Saint Luke telling us of the very last event
of Jesus' life on earth as witnessed by his disciples
and friends. Luke is very sparse in his description of
what actually happened, which is a little strange when
we remember that Luke can be very attentive to detail
when he so wishes. But here what does he tell us? -
very little apart from recording the event.
(Gospel)
"Then he led them out to Bethany and lifting up his
hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted
from them and was carried up into heaven."
(Acts)
“And when he had said this, as then were looking on he
was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight."
And that's all, nothing more! He simply
"parted from them" / "he was lifted up and a cloud took
him out of their sight." And that was the last his
disciples and friends ever saw of Jesus. It’s a rather
bald way of describing that parting moment which we call
the Ascension. There is no farewell party, no formal
speech to mark the occasion, no fuss or fanfare to give
importance to what happened. On the contrary, Luke
gives us the impression that Jesus quietly and simply
slips away.
2. Its not that the event is not important for
Luke. It obviously is if he closes his Gospel and
begins his Acts of the Apostles by telling us about it.
In fact, it is for him a pivotal event; on the one hand
it ends the time which Jesus spent on earth, and on the
other hand it marks the beginning of the life of the
Church. Everything then seems to hinge on Jesus going
back to his Father. While Luke is convinced of the
importance of what happened that day when Jesus led his
disciples out to Bethany, he is also scrupulously honest
in his description of what took place. He knows that
something happened which was quite unique and altogether
unlike all the other things which happened during Jesus
life including the forty days after the resurrection.
Everything else can be described as something which
happened here on earth, but this is something which
begins on earth and ends in heaven. And Luke, like us,
has no idea of what heaven is like, where it is or how
to describe it. So, he makes no attempt to try to
depict or picture it for us. He knows that to attempt
to do so would be a figment of his own imagination.
But he does want to draw our attention to the
fact that something wonderful and of great significance
is taking place. And, of course, that is - that Jesus,
every bit as human as we are (except for sin), with all
the limitations of our human condition and earthly
existence, can simply step into this other world where
all is joy and happiness and eternal life and love. It
all seems so natural and simple - just parting from his
friends, and stepping back into the world from which he
came when he was conceived. The significance is not
lost on Luke. If Jesus can enter so easily and
effortlessly (or so it seems) into this other world
which we call heaven and where the love of God fills
everything, that means the gateway to heaven is now open
to all Jesus' brothers and sisters. No wonder Luke then
ends his Gospel with the words - "And they worshipped
him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were
continually in the temple, blessing God." And so too do
we rejoice and worship the Lord as we recall his
Ascension. And we prayed - "May we follow him into the
new creation, for his ascension is our glory and our
hope."
3. Earth is now wedded to heaven by a bond that
can never be broken. There is now a bridge between this
earth of ours and the kingdom of heaven which can never
be destroyed. It is indestructible because it is a
bridge, not made by human hands, but by the hand of God
in the person of his son, Jesus. And because it is not
of our own making we do not have to be worried or
anxious about it.
We are only too aware of the destructive
forces which we find in our own lives and in the world
of human beings - tendencies so powerfully evoked by
Jane Hamilton in her novel, The Book of Ruth, and
more scientifically by Rollo May in his book Power
and Innocence, subtitled 'A search for the sources
of violence' - forces, barely beneath the surface, which
we find it very hard to control and which can so easily
destroy the good with it takes years to build up. We
know how love and friendship can be ended and torn apart
in an instant by our own reckless and thoughtless
behaviour. And of course we cannot close our eyes to
the frightening power for destruction which is now at
our disposal, forces which can obliterate whole cities
and their inhabitants in a second. That we might dare
to use them is a fact, for we have already done so
several times in the last century. No indeed, there is
no guarantee that we will not destroy the things of our
own making. We continue to do so every day.
So we can be truly glad that the bridge
between earth and heaven is not of our making. It is
made fast and secured by someone other that ourselves;
by a God who only builds up and never tears down. In
the person of Jesus, when he parted from his disciples
and when, as Luke puts it "he was taken up", God has
opened a way to heaven, a way that can never again be
closed. If by doing so Jesus has "passed beyond our
sight" it is "not to abandon us but to be our hope."
4. When describing what happened that day when
Jesus ascended into heaven Luke gives much more
attention to what Jesus said to his disciples just
before he parted from them. First of all he told them
that - "repentance and forgiveness of sins should be
preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from
Jerusalem. You are to be witnesses of these things."
/ "; you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." In
other words they were to go forth and preach the "Good
News" everywhere. No matter how sinful the world might
seem to be, no matter how much it carries within itself
the seeds of its own destruction, that is not the last
word, He himself had conquered sin and death and is
more than willing to share his victory with all who wish
to receive it. No matter how sordid and sinful the
world might be, no matter how much it might be the cause
of sadness and suffering, it is no longer a world closed
in on itself. He has opened for it a way to another
world where all the hopes and longings of those who
believe would be fulfilled. And it is not just
something which would take place in the future; the
transformation is already taking place despite all the
confusion and uncertainty. To assure them that this was
so he told them - "But you shall receive power when the
Holy Spirit has come upon you; ..." And we too have
received that same Spirit that we too might be heralds
of Gospel joy to the world of our own times.
QUOTATIONS:
1. "Surveying the abysmal chasm between my
certainty that everything human beings tried to achieve
was inadequate to the point of being farcical, that
mortality itself was a kind of gargoyle joke, and my
equal certainty that every moment of every day was full
of enchantment and infinitely precious; that human love
was the image vouchsafed us of God's love irradiating
the whole universe; that, indeed, embedded in each
grain of sand was eternity, to be found and explored, as
geologists explored the antiquity of fossils through
their markings - surveying this chasm, yawning in its
vastness to the point of inducing total insanity,
tearing us into schizophrenic pieces, I grasped that
over it lay, as it were a cable-bridge, frail, swaying,
but passable. And this bridge, this reconciliation
between the black despair of lying bound and gagged in
the tiny dungeon of the ego, and soaring upwards into
the white radiance of God's universal love - this bridge
was the Incarnation, whose truth expresses that of the
desperate need it meets. Because of our physical hunger
we know there is bread; because of our spiritual hunger
we know there is Christ."
(Malcolm Muggeridge, The Green Stick, Chronicles of
Wasted Time, Collins , London, 1972, p 81/82) |
