Solemnity of the Ascension Year C
Acts 1:1–11
Ps. 47:2–3, 6–7, 8–9
Ephesians 1:17-23 or
Hebrews 9:24-28; 10:19-23
Luke 24:46–53
Many unbelievers reject our Catholic faith due to a grave misunderstanding, considering belief in “the life to come” as rejection of the physical world, the world we experience every day. For them, there is a dichotomy between the so-called “real world” and what they consider an imaginary world of our own creation. The Ascension of the Lord is the mystery of faith that shows the falsehood of this dichotomy. We are committed to this world, in view of the next, which makes this world all the more important.
We believe in creation, visible and invisible, seen and unseen, and in the creator who loves us now and forever. The Ascension, which takes the Lord from our sight, moves our own human nature from this world to the next, transformed by the Resurrection and now dwelling forever in the very heart of the Holy Trinity. The Risen Lord Jesus, God and Man, is “seated at the right hand of the Father.”
This world of matter does matter. The spiritual world, to which we already belong, will include the reality in which we live. Our Catholic faith tells us that God so loved the world that He became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ and that Jesus rose from the dead in our flesh, and that after making known to His disciples that He had conquered death, took that human nature, risen and glorified, into the very heart of reality, the life of the Most Holy Trinity. This means that we must pay attention to the world around us as stewards of creation. We acknowledge, with St. Augustine, that God has made us for Himself, and that we are meant to know, love and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.
Jesus’ final instructions to His disciples as He ascends is for them to return to Jerusalem to pray for the promise of the Father. The Gospel of Luke expresses His charge this way: “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold I am sending the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
The Acts of the Apostles describes how this witness will unfold: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” We are now living in a time when this instruction can be fulfilled in the most literal sense.
The Church that began in Jerusalem and went to the confines of the Roman Empire has been established to the ends of the earth. In our own time, the successors to the Apostles, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Who was promised, have selected a man from “the new world,” a world “unknown” and therefore “unseen” at the time of the Jesus, to be the successor to Peter as the vicar of Christ, one who witnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus to all the nations.
Pope Leo XIV, in choosing the name Leo, commits the Church in our day to the responsibility of keeping in our sight all that is happening, especially to the most vulnerable and to those who “work for a living.” Dignity, respect and a desire for authentic communication and dialogue are no doubt to be a hallmark of a papacy under one whose motto is “In Illo uno unum,” that is, “in the One Christ, we are one.”
The time between Ascension and Pentecost has one primary prayer: “Come, Holy Spirit!” As we bring the Easter season to its close though this time of prayer, may we keep looking up and, at the same time, know that Jesus will return to bring salvation to all who believe in Him. May the Church live the unity willed by the One Who ascended so that His Spirit could dwell in and among us.