Ascension (Eleventh Sunday in Corona Time)

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20

For most of us, the coronavirus pandemic
has been a time of distance and separation,
a time of absence from the people and things we love.
There is, of course, the literal physical distance
that we must take from people:
no closer than six feet; faces veiled by masks.
I hear the French are even thinking of abandoning
greeting one another with a kiss on each cheek.
Then there is the separation we feel from friends and family,
an absence that technology seems unable to really compensate for:
nothing makes you appreciate the irreplaceability
of another person’s bodily presence
like an extended Zoom visit.
There is also a strange distance
that has affected our sense of time:
early March seems years, not weeks, ago.
We are above all distant from what we might think of
as our “normal,” pre-pandemic, selves:
so distant that we are beginning to think
that we may never recover those selves.

It might be tempting to thinks of the Ascension
as a feast of distance and separation and absence:
the going of Jesus to a distant place, far away from us,
his departure marking a vast distance
between us and those days
of his resurrected presence with his disciples,
a distance we try to bridge by sending up prayers,
in something like the religious equivalent of Zoom.
The joy of Easter for Jesus’ friends
was having him bodily back among them,
and the Ascension might seem to undo this.
And, indeed, the depiction of the Ascension in the Book of Acts
is something of a farewell scene:
the risen Jesus taking leave of his friends,
after which that stand, around looking up at the sky,
perhaps in wonder, or perhaps with longing
to have back again the bodily presence of the risen one.
But the scene of Jesus’s Ascension in the book of Acts
is balanced by his final words to his disciples
in the Gospel of Matthew:
“behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
The passing into heavenly glory of Jesus’s risen body
does not seem to deprive his friends of his presence.
Indeed, through the gift to them of his Holy Spirit,
Jesus is somehow more present, more with them,
than he was even in his resurrected body.
I think often of Pope Benedict’s description
of the Ascension as “the beginning of a new nearness.”
The entry of the risen Jesus into heavenly glory
does not involve him leaving here and going there,
but somehow brings here into there,
draws earth into heaven,
and in turn makes heaven present on earth
through the power of his Spirit,
who forms his followers into his body
and fills them like a temple built of living stones.
The Ascension does not deprive us
of Christ’s bodily presence;
rather, we become that bodily presence.
As Paul writes to the Ephesians,
God the Father, “put all things beneath his feet
and gave him as head over all things to the church,
which is his body,
the fullness of the one
who fills all things in every way.”
Through his ascension into glory,
Christ’s body now is spread abroad
throughout the world,
for, as the poet Hopkins, put it,
“Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”

I think one reason why the suspension of public Masses
has been such a trial for so many people
is because it is in gathering together for worship
and receiving sacramentally the gift of Christ’s body
that our identity as the body of Christ
is renewed and strengthened.
The temple built of living stones
is manifested most fully
in God’s people gathered at God’s altar,
and people feel keenly the absence of that gathering.
But without in any way diminishing
the real pain of absence that people are experiencing
we must believe that God
would not let us suffer this trial to no purpose.
This time of absence and distance can become,
through God’s Spirit,
an experience of the “new nearness” of the ascended Christ.
We cannot stand around looking lost,
wondering where the body of Christ has gone.
Our challenge on this day of Ascension
is to let the Spirit fill us
so that we can become his witnesses
through the fire of love
that has been poured into our hearts.
Perhaps this is what God is showing us today:
Christ’s body, the Church,
plays now in ten thousand places,
dispersed and yet somehow one through the Spirit.

The day will come to regather,
to receive again the body of Christ,
and it will be a day of rejoicing.
But for now we wait,
suffering time’s slow passage,
trusting God to provide,
knowing that heaven has been joined to earth,
that we remain joined to one another
through the bond of the Spirit,
that we are the church
even when we cannot go to church.
May God grant us the gifts of patience and love
and may God have mercy on us all.

Ascension

Readings: Acts1:1-11, Ephesians 1:17-23, Matthew 28:16-20

In medieval art, Jesus’s Ascension into heaven
was often depicted as Mary and the Apostles gathered together
looking up at a pair of legs and feet dangling from a cloud.
For people in the Middle Ages,
the universe was thought to be
a series of spheres
centered on the earth
and bounded by an outermost sphere
called the Empyrean heaven, a realm of pure light,
which was the dwelling place of God.
It was to this Empyrean heaven that Jesus had ascended.
Dante gives poetic expression to this
at the end of his Divine Comedy,
when he describes seeing God – Father, Son, and Spirit –
as three differently colored circles that are somehow one.
And the middle circle, Dante writes,

Within itself and in its coloring
Seemed to be painted with our human likeness
So that my eyes were wholly focused on it
(Paradiso, Canto 33).

Our humanity, which God the Son took upon himself
in being born of the Virgin Mary,
has in Christ’s Ascension entered into the life of God.
The union of God and humanity is not a temporary state
but has become an eternal reality
and serves for Dante as the focal point that allows him
to have some glimpse of our sharing
in the perfect peace of God,
the peace that surpasses our understanding.

Certainly for us
who no longer conceive of the universe
as centered upon the earth,
with heaven located somewhere above us,
pictures of feet dangling from clouds,
and perhaps even Dante’s sublime image
of a human figure
at the highest point of the empyrean heaven,
do not capture the mystery of the Ascension.
I suspect, however, that our difficulty
is not in the end
a problem with their picture of the universe
and of how to fit the mystery of Christ’s Ascension
into whatever our current picture of the universe might be.
It is rather the difficulty
of finding words to express so great a hope –
the hope that our poor, mortal humanity
might share in the riches of God’s glory,
might even now be dwelling
within the surpassing greatness of God’s power.
St. Gregory the Great wrote,
“The disturbance of things
may still be driving your hearts to and fro,
but fix the anchor of your hope
now in your eternal home” (Homily 29).
The Ascension of Jesus gives us
an almost unspeakable, unimaginable hope.

In the face of this mysterious hope,
all of us must make our own the words of Dante:,

O how pale now is language and how paltry
For my conception! And for what I saw
My words are not enough to call them meager
(Paradiso, Canto 33).

And yet we continue to seek ways to imagine
and words to express this hope.
The writer Maya Angelou, who died this past week,
concludes a poem entitled “Still I Rise”
with the following lines:

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Angelou is writing about
the perseverance and hope
of women and African Americans
in the face of oppression,
a hope that cannot be held down
but from the darkest depths
surges ever upward toward the light.
But Angelou’s poem also gives us words to speak
of a more universal struggle
and a more universal hope.
Indeed, in the voice of the poet,
we can hear an echo of the voice of Christ,
the voice of the one who has ascended
above the night of fear and death
into the wondrously clear daybreak of the resurrection,
the voice of the one
who now fills all things in every way,
and is the dream and the hope
of all of those who are enslaved by sin and suffering,
the voice of the one who has lifted our humanity
into the life of God himself.
It is the voice that speaks to us who,
tossed to and fro in this world,
find in Jesus the anchor
that fixes our hope in eternity.

Though our words and images
may be less than meager,
we still give voice to the hope
born in us through Christ’s Ascension.
In every Mass,
as we enter into the Eucharistic Prayer,
the priest bids us to lift up our heats
and we reply that we lift them up to the Lord.
We proclaim that our hopes are fixed on Jesus
who in the Eucharist lifts us with him
out of the nights of our terrors and fears,
and into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear.
We rise
we rise
we rise.

Ascension

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20

The event that we celebrate on this feast,

the Ascension of Jesus into heaven,

is recounted in our first reading, from the book of Acts.

Our Gospel reading, from Matthew,

doesn’t mention the Ascension

but rather tells us of the risen Jesus

commissioning his disciples

and promising to remain with them always.

Even though Matthew’s Gospel does not recount

the event of the Ascension,

there is a deep connection between this story

of the commissioning of the disciples

and Jesus' ascending to the right hand of the Father.

Matthew tells us that when the disciples saw Jesus,

“they worshipped, but they doubted.”

What is it that they doubt?

They don’t seem to doubt Christ,

since it says they worshipped him.

Perhaps they doubt their own capacity

to carry out the mission Jesus is giving them.

It is, after all, a daunting task he gives them:

“make disciple of all nation. . .

teaching them to observe

all that I have commanded you.”

Not, “make disciples of some nations”

or “make disciples of as many nations as you can,”

but “make disciples of all nations.”

Not, “teaching them to observe

some of the things I have commanded you”

or “teaching them to be just a little bit better,”

but “teaching them to observe

all that I have commanded you.”

This is a pretty tall order.

No wonder they doubted.

How is it possible for their small band

to make disciples of all nations?

How could they even remember,

much less teach others to observe,

all that Jesus had commanded them?

Perhaps it was these two “all”s

that caused them to doubt.

But the commission

to make disciples of all nations

and to teach them to observe

all that Jesus had commanded

is matched by two other “all”s in Jesus’ words:

“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me”

and “I am with you always,” –

the Greek is literally “all the days” –

“until the end of the age.”

As if in answer to the disciples’ doubts

about their ability to go to all the nation

and to teach them all that Jesus had commanded,

Jesus reassures him that he has “all power”

and will be with them “all the days”

and that they should therefore

not doubt their ability to carry out

the mission that he is giving them.

And it is in this second pair of “all”s that we find

the true meaning of this feast of the Ascension.

 

As St. Paul says in our second reading,

the Father of glory has raised Christ,

“far above every principality,

authority,

power

and dominion”

and has “put all things under his feet”

so that now he “fills all things in every way.”

If we think of this feast simply as saying

that Jesus has gone to live with God

somewhere above the clouds,

then it might seem as if the Ascension

places Jesus at a greater distance from his disciples

and calls into question his claim

that he will be with them all the days,

until the end of time itself.

But if we think of the Ascension

as Jesus’ full sharing in divine power

then, rather than being a departure,

it is what Pope Benedict has called

“the beginning of a new nearness.”

Jesus in his humanity is now present

to all times and places

just as God is present always and everywhere.

The Ascension tells us that the one who was born of Mary,

taught and healed,

suffered and died,

is as near to us as he was to his disciples

two millennia ago;

indeed, he is in some sense nearer to us.

He is present to us

because he has received power to fill all things.

And if he is with us then we need not doubt

that he will bestow upon us what we need

to fulfill the mission that he gives us.

It is easy for us to fall into thinking that we Christians

are followers of someone who lived a long time ago

and who remains with us only in the form

of some interesting stories and intriguing ideas.

But the feast of the Ascension tells us that this is not true;

when we say that Jesus has ascended to the right hand of God,

we are not saying that he has left this world for some other,

but that he is present in this world

with a new nearness,

sharing with us the power of his risen life.

Where is the ascended Jesus?

Not calling out to us across the centuries,

but speaking to each of us directly

in the words of Scripture.

Where is the ascended Jesus?

Not somewhere above the clouds,

but placing himself in our hands

in the Eucharist we celebrate.

Where is the ascended Jesus?

Not managing some cosmic bureaucracy

but consoling and challenging us

through our fellow Christians

who are his body, the Church.

Like the disciples, we too worship . . .

and doubt.

We come here to worship,

because we believe in him,

but we also doubt that we can do all that he asks of us.

But the feast of the Ascension calls us

to cast those doubts aside

and believe that the one

who “fills all things in every way”

is present to us with a new nearness,

even until the end of time.