Ascension of the Lord

You learn something every day.  When I first came to Christ our Hope more than a year ago, I remember asking myself “so when is the Parish’s feast day? There’s no feast of Christ our Hope in the Calendar.”  One of those questions that flashes across the screen in your head, and then gets pushed aside by something else doubtless of greater, or at least more pressing importance, like “so where did I put my briefcase, or house keys, or glasses, or short term memory.” 

So I was delighted earlier this week, when I got my email packet of information about today’s liturgy finally to have that question answered.  Today is our parish’s patronal feast, the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, a feast of hope. 

I’ve always been intrigued and just a little baffled by this feast.  40 days before, we are told, Jesus triumphed over death.  He rose in the dawn of the first day of the week, showed himself to his friends and disciples, ate and drank with them, encouraged them, and then told them he was returning to God his father. 

He promised to send God’s spirit over them, and that’s what we celebrate next week in the solemn feast of Pentecost, which as much as any other day, marks the birthday of our Church. The rising of the Lord Jesus and the Gift of the Spirit are the very core, the ground zero of our belief, what makes us a people, what gives us hope. 

Yet I for one find myself saying over and over again, “Yes, of course, but it sure would have been easier if Jesus had just stayed around. Why didn’t you just stick around? ”  It would have been so much easier…

And here we are, staring up to heaven, scratching our heads. 

Let me show you a hint, a key to understanding what is going on.  It comes in the form of a charming English medieval manuscript illustration.   It is delightful in its simplicity. The disciples and Mary stand staring up, hoping to hold onto him, and what do we see?

We see only the feet of Jesus.  We see two angels.  With one hand each gives Jesus a bit of boost up. This may be the only image in the history of art where we see the Son of God getting a little tickle on the bottom of his feet. 

More important, though, are the angels’ other hands: they point their long index fingers at the befuddled crowd: they shake those long fingers at them, and, in effect, tell them “Get to work!”   Their message is clear.  Jesus has returned to God, who is father and mother of us all.  They promise, as Jesus had promised, that he will come again.  That’s our hope.

And in this meantime, until he comes again to make all things one in God, the work of bringing about God’s kingdom—the kingdom we pledge ourselves to every time we say “thy kingdom come”—rests squarely on our shoulders.  That’s Jesus’ hope:  that in the power of the Spirit he shared with us from the cross, at Pentecost, in our baptism, in the Eucharist we share, we will continue his work, the work of bringing God’s kingdom of mercy and justice and peace to its fullness. 

By returning to the father, Jesus sets us free, free creatively and faithfully to speak his word and do his works.

This word, these works set out before us seem daunting, even impossible.  We look around, and we realize that most of the time we are just as befuddled as those disciples were on the mountaintop.  And yet we hope. 

We hope in the Spirit who makes us one, each endowed with different gifts. We hope in the collective power of those gifts, a power infinitely greater than the sum of the parts. We hope in each other, in a community that is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. We hope in Jesus’ promise ever and always to be with us in the power of his Spirit, even to the ends of the earth, even to the end of time.

One HOPE.  One body, one spirit, one faith, one baptism, one God who is father and mother of us all, who is over all, works through all, is all in all.  One HOPE.

Even more.  We hope in Christ who carries our joys and sorrows back to God with him as he ascends.  We hope in him who still carries in his glorified body his wounds, our wounds. We hope that in him we will always find mercy; that our sorrows will be transformed into acceptance and finally into joy; that our confusion will become understanding, that our fear and uncertainty will be transformed into hope and then to love. 

People of Galilee, People of Seattle, People of Christ our Hope, why are you standing there looking at the sky? 

Hope in him, and get to work. 

Happy Feast Day to you all!

Thomas M. Lucas, SJ

 Post-Communion Meditation

Ascension - Denise Levertov 

Stretching Himself as if again, 

through downpress of dust 

upward, soul giving way 

to thread of white, that reaches 

for daylight, to open as green 

leaf that it is... 

Can Ascension 

not have been 

arduous, almost, 

as the return 

from Sheol, and 

back through the tomb 

into breath? 

Matter reanimate 

now must reliquish 

itself, its 

human cells, 

molecules, five 

senses, linear 

vision endured 

as Man - 

the sole 

all-encompassing gaze 

resumed now, 

Eye of Eternity. 

Reliquished, earth's 

broken Eden. 

Expulsion, 

liberation, 

last 

self-enjoined task 

of Incarnation. 

He again 

Fathering Himself. 

Seed-case splitting. 

He again 

Mothering His birth:

torture and bliss.