Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
Think about one time in your life when you were in total awe but also became aware of the magnitude of the day. Perhaps it was walking down the aisle the day you got married, or holding your first-born for the first time, or holding the diploma after graduation, or receiving the appointment letter to a job you really wanted. I think of the day my parents left for home after they dropped me at the seminary. I was only seventeen-and-a-half years old. There was a little turmoil in my heart. But then, as the train pulled away from the train station, a sense of awe and sense of calm took over me. I saw it as a sign that indeed God was calling me to the priesthood. I remember becoming aware of an immense responsibility. The experience is still engrained in my brain.
I wonder this is how the disciples may have felt at the Ascension.
On the one hand, the Feast of the Ascension is culmination of Christ’s life. Jesus came from the Father, and now he returns to the Father. But today, I would like to reflect on the Ascension from the perspective of the disciples. I would like to think about Ascension as God’s enduring trust in humanity.
God Entrusted Jesus to Humanity
When God created the first human beings God gifted them with two great gifts – reason (intelligence) and freedom. God took a great risk by giving them these two gifts. Using these gifts, I am sure the first human beings did many things right. But we also know that they used their intelligence and freedom to make choices contrary to God’s will. This continued all through the Old Testament with Israel.
Despite Israel’s the checkered history, God entrusted his Son, Jesus, into human hands. We know the mess that people made up of that story. Not only did they crucify him but except for one disciple, his mother, and a few women, everyone abandoned him. Now, as Jesus is about to leave the earth, he gathered this community one more time. He then did the very thing that God had done all through salvation history. God entrusted the church and the gospel into the hands of his disciples. At the Ascension, God shows God’s enduring trust in humanity.
What Christ did with the disciples that first Ascension, Christ has done with us. At our baptism, not only did we become part of the Body of Christ, but Jesus is entrusted to us; faith is entrusted to us; the gospel is entrusted to us; the Church is entrusted to us; Christ’s mission is entrusted to us. God never gives up on humanity.
Christ Entrusts Us His Presence
At the Ascension, Jesus said to his disciples, “I am with you always, until the end of the world” (Mt 28:20). Christ’s promise to his disciples was that he would continue to be with him until the end of the age. This presence served a two-fold purpose. On the one hand, Christ’s presence strengthened the church and gave them hope. On the other hand, Christ’s entrusts his presence to his disciples. Jesus said to them, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." The disciples must now take Christ’s presence to share it with the world.
What does this mean for us? This means that the way the world will come to know Christ is entrusted to us. Sometimes Christ’s followers have done terrible things in his name. On the other hand, the Christ of the gospels, the one who mingled with tax-collectors and sinners, the one who showed mercy, compassion, and love, the one who made God accessible to all, trusts us to take his presence to the world. Jesus has put his presence in our hands.
Our Life, Family, Work, and Everything Else – God’s Act of Trust
There is one more thing. There is more than Christ, the Church, and the Gospel that have been entrusted to us. The life that each one of us has is God’s enduring trust in is. The family we have is God’s enduring trust in us. God trusts us with our work and profession.
What does this mean for us? It means that with our life, in our families, and through all that we do – we honor God’s enduring trust in us. It means that all that we are and all that we have becomes a way to share Christ’s presence in the world. One day, I hope we can entrust it back to God with confidence what God has entrusted to us.
Christ has ascended into heaven. Yet his presence is in every Eucharist. Once again Christ will entrust himself to us. As we leave this Church, let us take him to our homes, to our work, indeed into the world.