Ascension: The Final Good-bye (Conclusion)

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, S.J.

“…You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight. While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? 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.” Acts 1:8-11

Then he led them (out) as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God. Luke 24:50-53

Piety

O Lord, we cannot let you go. We need you to stay because without you, we are unable to face the problems of life. How can we do anything without you? We like to touch and feel. If you are gone it will not be the same. We need to know your closeness and be with you in the confidence we have when you are seer, and close enough to touch. Do not go Lord. Stay on because there is no one who can replace our need of having you close. How we want to see you, Lord. We cannot believe that you are lost in the clouds. Will you return? Can we not hold on to you? Do you have to go? Do you really want to stay as much as we want you to stay? Your ascension is our prayer of questions. Amen.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/051707b.shtml

(See the opening part of Fr. Joe’s reflection on the Ascension of our Lord here.)

This “Omega” of our faith, the Ascension, is really the beginning of the marvelous journey into a self realization of a Mystery of God. The call to become Divine is, by virtue of our own rising to the new life, our being able to live in the presence of God in the now of our life. It carries with it the promise of the resurrection. The ascension allows us to see, but not clearly. Our own resurrection will allow us to see with the fullness of love. We will see and hear what cannot even be imagined now because it is so much more than what is suggested by the ascension. The realization that we are made for another world is part of the ascension grace. It is years of living in the presence of God, and the degree of awareness of that presence which claims our hearts bringing the anticipation of our own resurrection.

Our response to the ascension will be seen in the fullness of our living the mandate of the ascension. Christ passed on the job he had received from the Father. We have to continue his work where he left off if we are going to live up to our baptism. This is what subsidiarity is all about. The work of the Church will be finished when the entire world belongs to Christ. If we have not done all that we had hoped to do, it is still possible to pass on the responsibility of our charisms. It is here that the Mystery of ascension gives rise to the Church. The Angels query to the Apostles: “...Why stand you here idle?”(Acts 1:10) should have been followed by: “...Go forth and teach all nations...! (Matt 28:20) For so many years, spirituality was a turning in, without the going out. There was and is an acknowledgment of God and the Savior. Our lives were so private we did not really have to announce the good news of the Christ within us. This Christ life, which is the truth of who we are in this new life, gives rise to the responsibility of fulfilling the mandate to “Go forth!”

In Baptism, our initiation rite, the mandate to go forth is instilled in each of us. The literal meaning of baptism is discoverable in the branding of slaves by the Romans. Slaves were marked on their forehead with the sign of the Roman family to whom they belonged. We are branded with the cross of Christ in our baptism. We are claimed and owned by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity comes to make their home within us, and the Mystery of Indwelling takes place. We become Temples of the Holy Spirit. Letting Christ out to the world has its counterpoint in the Indwelling, which flows out of baptism. We are created in the image and likeness of God. Our Christ life from baptism is what we must let out of ourselves to counterbalance Christ's going from 'the world in the ascension. This is expressed by making Christ present in the world by our lives, and by claiming where we are for his dwelling.

Vatican II speaks of the Church as “The People of God.” In the Decree on the Laity, the laity is given the responsibility to baptize the world with the presence of Christ. They have to go where the Church has not yet been. The power to do this flows out of the presence of Christ in their lives, which comes with baptism. The vows of Religious have been spoken of as a second baptism. They are seen today as a public commitment to live out the fullness of the baptismal promises. Religious, in a sense, commit themselves to be professional holy people, attempting to make the world holy by the intensity of their Christ life. The external signs of this life are the poverty, chastity and obedience, which show a genuine desire to live the same life as Christ. The vows single people out, when they are perpetual, because fewer people in this world of ours are willing to make a permanent commitment. Love is forever, and the promise to stay with Christ and to go where he would go is more perfectly stated in the commitment to live his life. These signs give the world the right to count on Religious to witness to Christ in every environment both favorable and unfavorable. Christ has a claim on every dimension of the life of a religious, and the consecration, which used to be considered a separation from the world, puts on the Religious the tremendous responsibility of making the world holy by sharing the intensity of the Christ life.

The ascension of our Lord has long beer, looked upon as a statement that the final act is finished, the curtain has been drawn, it is over, the torch has been passed on. But the reality of the ascension, the statement that it is all right to begin again, says that Christ believes that we are now ready to be his presence in the world in which we live. It is our responsibility to re enter our world and claim it for Christ, and to share his love. We know that he came to claim us as brothers and sisters. The promise of Christ to stay, even as he goes, fills us with peace.

We stand on the hill of the ascension and see Christ whom we love going off without us. He wants to take us and we want to go. The ascension recalls the difficulty Christ had in leaving us behind and our desire to go with him. Christ had already said he must go but would send the Spirit. The Spirit of Truth would tell us all we need to know. Christ had said it all, but we did not understand. The Angel comes to ask why we are standing idle. How many times have we missed the point when we read that statement? We did not understand those men who locked themselves in the upper room for fear of the Jews. They loved Christ so much that without him they felt they had nothing to give, let alone, to live for. The Spirit would have to come before the Apostles would have the necessary courage to go out and share with the world the Good News of salvation. But at that moment they were just watching him go. For the rest of their lives the Apostles would feel the weight of sorrow that held them back as they reached out for him.

The ascension is a mystery that we relive again and again in the after prayer periods of our lives. We trace his presence on our souls by meditations. He traces his love in us in the moments of contemplation when he lifts us up into himself. We have the sense to cherish those moments of our soul’s contentment when he seems so close. But all too quickly the contemplative moment is gone. We find ourselves staring off into the distance at the ascension. Each moment of grace takes our hearts up into the heavens. Our prayer soars and the beauty of going off into prayer is the reminder that we are made for another world. As much as we want to go with him, and as hard as we try to hold onto his love, he goes off and leaves us with a task to be done for the sake of his love. The desire to hold on to prayer can be for us what the ascension was for the Apostles.

We want to go with him, but it is not up to us to pick the hour and the way. We expect him to come soon, so we go on with our work. We want to be ready when he comes again, so we look for, his presence in all that is happening around us. The reality of going with him is what the Church is all about. We go with him by living the reality of his presence in the Church. In the ascension, he leaves one place, so that he might be in every place. He promised his presence in us, and we honor it by making him present to others. He calls us to go into the whole world and claim the world as the possession of the Trinity. Christ wants to go with us. Baptism and his ascension make it possible.

The ascension may be like a curtain closing so that the stage may be set for the next act, and this act is ours. Where we step out in his name, we give him a foothold in our, world. Where he has stepped in the ascension gives us a foothold in heaven. Two steps, one in each direction, allow us to cross the Grand Canyon that separates time and eternity. Christ had to go so that he could humanly be in the many parts of the world where we would make him present through the sharing of baptism. Two worlds would be joined by a love not limited by the goodbye of the ascension.

Every Nativity, the Alpha of our Faith, has a date with the Ascension, the Omega of our Faith. Every going has the implications of staying. Ascension is not the last breath of Christ's Resurrection, but the first breath of our Resurrection as he sends the Spirit to make us his love to the World we claim for the Father.

We pray with the Apostles to the Lord of the Ascension: O Lord, we cannot let you go. We need you to stay because without you, we are unable to face the problems of life. How can we do anything without you? We like to touch and feel. If you are gone it will not be the same. We need to know your closeness and be with you in the confidence we have when you are seer, and close enough to touch. Do not go Lord. Stay on because there is no one who can replace our need of having you close. How we want to see you, Lord. We cannot believe that you are lost in the clouds. Will you return? Can we not hold on to you? Do you have to go? Do you really want to stay as much as we want you to stay? Your ascension is our prayer of questions.

You could only have gone, Lord, if you knew that you would live in the poverty and brokenness of the least ones who would come into our hearts. It is a powerful question you asked of Paul on the road to Damascus: “Why are you persecuting me?”(Acts 9:4) It is the question of every relationship of our lives. How can we love the God we do not see if we do not love the neighbor we do see? How true it is that in the ascension you have become the stranger of our lives.

You are gone and we can only find you now as those strangers. How can we reach out to one we do not know how to love? Lord, let us see you in everyone whom you love, because we know that you become one with the one you love. Your love does not know the limitation of distance. You are with us still in the love that will not let Us go it alone. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your, promise to remain with us.

Action

We hear the question of the Angels: “Why do you stand here idle?” We do not yet understand fully. We need to know what it means to be about the mission we share from you of being about your Father's business. You are such a lover that you would be our love for each other. Help us, Lord, to bridge the gap that is the ascension, and be the power of the ascension in the lives of our brothers and sisters. Help us to do this by sharing the love you have left behind in our hearts; we can only keep you, Lord, by giving you away.

Lord, help us to be an uplifting experience for all of our brothers and sisters so that we may be drawn together in the wake of your going. Help us to find the way to the realization of the Resurrection in our own lives. Lord, strengthen our belief in the Resurrection. Help us accept your ascension as the beginning of our mission. Let us share the promises of your love to our world. Let your goodbye be our hello to the mission of sharing the love of your heart with our world. Let us be strengthened by the coming of the Spirit.