Going Away In Order to Be Near

 

Deacon Dave · Going Away In Order to Be Near

Homily for the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, May 21, 2023. Gospel of St. Matthew 28:16-20. Theme: Going Away In Order to Be Near 

Compared to Easter, the Ascension of Christ into Heaven can seem kind of anti-climatic in our liturgy. What I mean is, we spent 40 days of Lent getting ready for Easter. And then we had over-the-top liturgies from Holy Thursday through the Easter Vigil. The Easter Season itself goes on for many weeks and by the time the Ascension comes around it can almost seem like an afterthought. But in reality, the Ascension is the icing on the cake of Easter, so to speak. The Ascension takes up where the Resurrection left off. It magnifies and expands the Risen Lord’s presence and makes a promise to all of us about what we will one day experience for ourselves. So, far from being an afterthought, the Ascension is immensely important to Christ’s entire mission of salvation in three ways. 

First of all, the Ascension proclaims Jesus as the universal Savior and expands His presence. It allows Him to be available to all people of all time and in every place. When He lived His physical life on Earth, Jesus was very much tied to a very particular group of people (the Hebrews) and limited to a very specific and localized section of the planet (the Mediterranean Middle-East). His movements were constrained by time and space as well as by geography and politics within the Roman Empire. Of course he was always God, but in His humanity He was tied down and limited. But the Ascension has freed Him from all those restrictions and limitations! He no longer belongs to any one country but is King of All Nations. He is no longer bound to communicate in any one language or owned by any one culture. He can now speak to every human heart and be present in every village, city and nation. The Ascension allows Christ to freely exercise His role as the Universal Lord with His healing embrace encompassing all the world and every single person in it. 

Second, the Ascension transforms Christ’s way of being with us from the physical to the spiritual, from the visible to the invisible. At the Ascension Jesus left earth dramatically, by being lifted up into the sky and taken out of sight. It didn’t have to be done that way but He chose this type of exit as a powerful way of reminding the disciples to stop looking for Him in ways that we were used to doing. He would still be with them and with us but in new and different ways. In His farewell speech at the Last Supper Jesus repeated many times that He would come back to us, remain with us, live within us. And He even told us how we could experience His ever-abiding presence: through obedience to His Word, through love for Him, through the Spirit’s power, through service to the poor and suffering, through the Real Presence of the Eucharist, through the Mystical Body which is His Church. This aspect of the Ascension reminds us that there is a vibrant reality all around us that is invisible but every bit as real as the one we experience with our senses. 

Thirdly, the Ascension tells us not only about what happened to Jesus, but also about what will happen to us. It points us to the reality of “the hope to which we have been called”, as St. Paul said in our second reading. Just as Easter promises us real life beyond the grave, so the Ascension shows us that this real life will be one that is experienced in both body and soul. Where Jesus has gone, we hope someday to be. This is why Jesus said at the Last Supper, “I am going to prepare a place for you, that where I am you also may be.” Being ascended into the glory-life like Jesus was not something reserved for just Him alone. He went through this experience before us as our Leader and Pioneer, as the Scriptures testify. But this glorification is also our destiny as redeemed human beings. The Assumption of the Blessed Mother body and soul into Heaven is a sign and proof of this fact. Mary was human like us, not divine, and yet she too was lifted up. The difference between our glorification and hers is that we must wait until Christ returns but we do indeed know that it will happen to us. 

So hopefully, we can see that the Ascension is every bit as much an important celebration in our Faith as is Easter. It proclaims that Jesus is the universal Savior who has promised to be with us always and who continues His mission on Earth through the members and ministries of His Church. It reminds us of what we profess to believe every Sunday in the Creed: that reality and existence can be found in both the seen and unseen realms. And last but not at all least, it assures us that though Jesus may be gone from our sight, He is definitely not gone from our lives. He is more present to us now than He ever could have been before and is as close to each one of us as the beating of our heart and the whisper of a prayer.