In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly
believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.
I adore you. With profound reverence.
I ask you for pardon of my sins and grace to make this time of
prayer fruitful. My mother, Immaculate Saint
Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian Angel, intercede for
me. Today we celebrate the Feast of
the Ascension of the Lord, and it's a very special occasion.
It's the culmination of our Lord's life with us here on
earth, and the day that he leaves the apostles and ascends
to be with the Father. And in the last, the discourse
that Jesus made at the Last Supper.
In Saint John's Gospel chapter 14, he says that he encourages
the apostles to rejoice. They're slightly apprehensive
when He speaks about how He's going to be leaving them, and
you can understand that they might well be apprehensive at
that. How on earth are they going to
manage and so on if Jesus were to leave them?
But he says, you heard me say to you, I go away and I will come
to you. If you loved me, you would have
rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is
greater than I. So the apostles should have
rejoiced. They should be happy for Jesus
on this day that he's going to be with the Father.
Obviously in his divine side he's always with the Father, but
his human side, which he shares with us, his humanity is going
to be with the Father now. And this should be an occasion
for rejoicing for for him that we should be delighted for him
that this day has come and that the resurrection, which is the
triumph, the the fruit of the cross, has now reached another
milestone whereby his human nature has ascended to heaven
and sits at the right hand of the Father.
So that's what we're celebrating.
And let's celebrate this feast day.
It's one of the great feast days of the year.
I suppose we could say there's Easter, Christmas, Pentecost,
and Ascension Thursday are really the central mysteries of
faith that we celebrate every year.
There are many other great feast days, but these are so much part
of what we're celebrating. And the other feast days seem to
be, uh, come as a result of the these central four days in our
year. So it's a day to be happy and to
rejoice with our Lord. And for our Lord, it's also a
day to rejoice for ourselves, because the liturgy of today's
Mass keeps on reminding us that this is a day for us too, not
just for Jesus. Where the head has gone before
in glory, the body is called to follow in hope.
They are words from the collect of today's Mass.
During the day. The Ascension of Christ is our
exaltation as well, and so we rejoice with devout
Thanksgiving. And then during the Roman Canon,
which has a special little insert for this day, which only
occurs on very special occasions like Christmas and Easter and
Epiphany and, and today, the special insert for the Feast of
the Ascension puts it as follows, Celebrating the most
sacred day on which your only begotten Son our Lord, placed at
the right hand of your glory our weak human nature, which He had
united to himself. Our weak human nature has been
placed at the right hand of the glory of God, seated at the
right hand of the Father, as we often say.
So it's as though we all have ascended to heaven on this day.
Obviously we haven't yet, but it's promising us that our human
nature is going to be placed also at the right hand of God.
Obviously not quite in the same way as Christ's human nature is,
but still we are in Christ and so we receive the same reward,
the same great privilege as he has has done on this as we
celebrate it on this day. Jesus didn't discard his
humanity at the end of the work of redemption.
He didn't sort of think, well, I've, you know, I've used this
human body to die and rise again and well, that's it's performed.
It's it's it's task. So now I can leave it aside and
return to heaven, my divinity. But no Christ seated at the
right hand of the Father with his human body, with the wounds,
those wounds which even after the resurrection are still
visible. And Thomas is invited to place
his hand in Jesus wounds and to touched them so as to be
convinced of the resurrection. We're not so much being
convinced of the resurrection by the wounds remaining in Christ's
hands, feet and side, but we're being convinced of his love for
us. And every time we see a
crucifix, we know that we're seeing that and that crucifix is
retained, that crucified. 1 still in heaven with those with
those wounds. They haven't been sort of
sanitised, airbrushed out of history.
They're very much part of the real physical, material body of
Christ seated at the right hand of the Father, from which from
where he intercedes for us and helps us.
Saint Stephen at his martyrdom. So heaven opened and Jesus
standing, not sitting at the right hand of the Father.
I suppose he was standing because he was there to help
Stephen and to encourage him and to keep him going as the first
of all the martyrs. Well, Jesus is sitting and
standing at the right hand of the Father for us too, to help
us in our struggles and to intercede for us in the Mass of
the penitential right. We often can say you are seated
at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us.
So the church formally declares this as being the case, that
he's there at the right hand of the Father as our intercessor
par excellence, A mediator between God and man, because he
is both God and man. And the church always prays
through Jesus, all those prayers at Mass and other liturgical
occasions, it's through Jesus Christ our Lord or some, some
phrase like that. That's how the the prayers
always end. Because Jesus is true God, but
also true man. And we can turn to him as to our
brother who understands us and lifts us up and helps us to
relate to the Father in him and through him.
So you have placed your only begotten Son, placed at the
right hand of your glory, our weak human nature, which he had
united to himself. So it's a it's a day to
celebrate this exaltation of our weak, frail, sinful, not Jesus,
of course, but in our case, sinful humanity, which we know
is able to overcome those sins with God's grace through the
sacraments and to be touched by Jesus healing hand and to join
him at the right hand of the Father eventually.
So with all that in mind, we could look at the readings of
today's Mass and see what they have to tell us about the
mystery of the Ascension. Because it is a mystery in the
sense, not in the sense that it's a puzzle, but I suppose
it's a mystery in the sense that while we, on the one hand, we
know it very well, it's part of our faith.
We say it every time we recite the Creed, send it to Heaven,
sees it at the right hand of the Father.
We know it off by heart. But mysteries are funny things
that the more you think about them, the more you can find out
and the more you realise that there is still to be found out.
Even those mysteries in the rosary which we meditate upon
and contemplate or try to contemplate, we, we don't ever
think now. Yeah, now I understand that.
Perhaps I do. Perhaps I have a good
understanding of various mysteries of the Rosary, but
that doesn't mean I've managed to exhaust all its meaning.
There's much more there. There's I'll never be able to
completely make understand and make my own of.
Which is great because we'll never run out of ideas and never
run out of new insights that the Holy Spirit can inspire in US.
And the feast of the ascension is like that.
We could always find out more that more aspects of it which
can encourage us and help us to ascend with Jesus.
The first reading of Mass talks about the Acts of the Apostles.
When the apostles at the very beginning of that book, chapter
1, verses 1 to 11, meet with Jesus and after the 40 days he
had continued. St Luke tells us he had
continued to appear to them and tell them about the Kingdom of
God. So when he had been at table
with them, he told them not to leave Jerusalem, or sorry, He
had told them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for
what the Father had promised, which of course we know in
retrospect now is the Holy Spirit.
The apostles had heard their words, but they still didn't
know what was going to happen in a few days time.
Not many days from now is how Jesus puts it.
So perhaps a few days later, after that meal, we don't know
exactly, but they meet together and they asked him, Lord, has
the time come? Are you going to restore the
Kingdom of Israel? Because they still were
hankering after something like the Davidic Kingdom, like the
the good old days, the golden age of the Kingdom, the United
Kingdom around King David in Jerusalem.
Could this happen once more? And now that Jesus has risen
from the dead, why, why shouldn't, why shouldn't it
happen once more? So there's still a little bit a
little bit inaccurate and not very clear about what Jesus task
of redemption has come to do. They still see it in a slightly
political way. And Jesus answer is very
eloquent, not so much by words but by actions.
He's he replies to them that St Hose Maria puts it in his homily
for the day. His reply to them is to ascend
to heaven. In other words, well, no, I'm
not going to restore the Kingdom to Israel.
That is not my task. And as he before he actually
ascends to heaven, he tells them, you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and then you will be my
witnesses, not only in Jerusalem, but throughout Judea
and Samaria, and indeed to the ends of the earth.
So he corrects their slightly limited perspective of the
redemption and of their fate. It will only be fully corrected
when the Holy Spirit comes, actually a few days later.
That's when they, it will really click and they'll understand
what's involved in a complete way, in a totally rounded way,
that it's not a, a social or political liberation, even
though it will have an impact on this world, on society and
politics. Because, well, our Lord's
message refers to every aspect of human life.
And he's still going to be present in all those features of
life, but not in a sort of partisan way, but rather
inspiring people at all levels to be have a new approach to all
of those realities. So as he was saying this, he was
lifted up while they looked on, and a cloud took him from their
sight. They were staring into the sky
when suddenly two men in white were standing near them.
And they said, why are you men from Galilee standing here
looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from
you into heaven? This same Jesus will come back
in the same way as you have seen him go there.
So you can imagine the apostles wistfully looking after Jesus as
he disappears from their sight. Nostalgia just missing him
already wondering what are we going to do now?
Who will look after us and and the angels help them to not be
looking so much into the past and not to be thinking of Jesus
as a a figure from the past, but rather remember that he is with
them now that it's here and it's now that they can do good and
they can be witnesses of all these things.
They're going to have to roll up their sleeves and bring what
they have received to the whole world, even though they still
feel totally unable and the fact are totally unable to do so
until the Holy Spirit really comes and helps them to first of
all see and then also to love with a love that overcomes all
the difficulties and fears that they may be feeling.
That moment has not yet come, but the angels are sort of
saying to them, the two men in white, presumably angels are
saying it's now it's here. You can go tea to all nations
and be witnesses. So start now.
Don't be looking upwards, don't be looking after him.
But he is with you all days, so whatever you're going to be
doing, you won't be on your own. And eventually we assume this
convinced them and they set out, as they definitely will on
Pentecost Day to to do all of this.
And well, I suppose we wouldn't have what we have today if they
hadn't managed to do so. The second reading then goes on
to talk about in more detail where has Jesus gone?
The Hebrews it is not not as though Christ had entered a man
made sanctuary which was only modelled on the real 1.
So they're alluding to the letter of the Hebrews is often
about the sacrifices and the temple, that in the centre of
Jerusalem, centre of the Jewish faith, and trying to show that
there is a greater temple, a greater sacrifice that has
fulfilled that promise of the old dispensation.
And this moment of the Ascension is when Jesus entered not an
unmade sanctuary modelled on the real one, the Holy of Holies in
the temple for instance, but it was heaven itself, so that he
could appear in the actual presence of God on our behalf.
And he does not have to offer himself again and again, like
the high priest going into the sanctuary year after year with
blood that is not his own. No, he has made his appearance
once for all, now at the end of the last age, to do away with
sin by sacrificing himself. In other words, brothers,
through the blood of Jesus we have the right to enter the
sanctuary by a new way which He had opened for us, a living
opening through the curtain, the big screen in the temple which
screamed off the holy of Holies, and nobody could enter except
the high priest on the great Day of Atonement.
Well, Jesus has entered in to the true Holy of Holies, and we
can all enter with him and in him and after him he's entered
into heaven itself. And as we've been saying earlier
on, we, our humanity, our human frailty, is joined with him and
has entered into that same place with him because we are sharers
somehow in his divinity, because we share in his humanity.
So in that sense, it's a great day for us to to.
Think that we have been brought into God's presence.
And this of course happens in so many different ways.
We think of the Blessed Eucharist, how we can have this
familiarity with Jesus, and we can think of how Jesus has given
us Mary to be our mother too, so that we can be in Christ, sons
and daughters of the Father. So we really have entered into
this holy of holies, even though we're living in the midst of
everyday life. But as St Josemaria puts it, the
divine paths of the earth have been opened up.
And so whether it's work or friendships or family or joys or
sorrows, all the different things that occur to us, they
have a new meaning because Jesus has touched all of these things
and he has brought them with him to heaven so they can sanctify
us. Saint Joseph Maria was very keen
on saying, you know that the the the feast of the Ascension tells
us that all human life can be sanctified because Jesus has
touched it. He worked, he had friends, he
lived, he died, he had joys, he had sorrows, he had a family.
He had everything that we have except sin.
And even he touched the horrible after effects of sin in his own
life, everything. And he has brought all of that
with him to to heaven, brought all of us there too.
So this feast day really does help us to be able to follow
with Him and rejoice with that. The divine paths of the earth
have all been opened up. Everything is now different,
even though it remains exactly the same.
We don't expect little miracles. We expect to.
We expect the the miracle of doing, living ordinary life in
an extraordinary way with God's grace.
Finally, we have the Gospel, which of course deals with the
ascension as well. So we're lucky in this feast
day. We have the Acts of the Apostles
which has an account of the ascension, and we have Saint
Luke's Gospel written by the same writer and he has a
slightly more truncated version of the ascension in the Gospel.
As he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to
heaven. He blessed them.
Can imagine Jesus with his hands outstretched, blessing them.
Perhaps not the sign of the cross as we're used to, but just
blessing them, you know, hands outstretched, symbolising all
the graces and all the blessings that He was bestowing upon them,
potentially which would emerge as time went by.
He was carried up to heaven and they worshipped him.
And he explained just before he ascended to heaven that you see
how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the
third day rise from the dead, and that in His name, repentance
for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the
nations beginning from Jerusalem.
And this is a constant kind of chorus in what we read after the
resurrection that Jesus explains, and then the apostles
afterwards from their in their turn after Pentecost day, when
they're explaining things, they always underline this is exactly
what was written in the Scriptures.
This is what we were expecting for centuries and it has now
happened. And so they link up the
prophecies with what actually happened to Jesus.
Remember when Jesus was speaking to the two disciples on the road
to a mosque, was it not necessary that the Christ should
suffer these things and so enter into his glory?
And then he explained to them all those things in the
Scriptures concerning himself. It would have been lovely to
have heard of that explanation. But in a certain sense, the
Church is always giving us that same explanation.
We hear it all the time from the very first preaching of Peter on
Pentecost day right down to our present day.
The Church is always saying this is what was promised and it has
happened. This is the fulfilment of what
God had undertaken to His chosen people.
Now it has truly happened, and you can imagine how for the
apostles, they would suddenly understand a kind of aha moment
when everything clicked, all the things that they knew but still
were in sort of a kind of potential state, all those
promises that have been made, but the Messiah and how what he
would do. And now it had happened.
At the time, perhaps they weren't all that clear that it
was happening because for instance, the crucifixion, they
thought this was disaster. Saint Peter had said before and
this can't happen to you, Lord. And then when it did happen, we
can imagine, we know that he denied Jesus three times and ran
away and so on. So they, they found it hard to
take it to heart. But now they're beginning to see
this was what was promised. This was, this is what it was
all about. They take it on board and
they're able to pass it on. But still the feast of the
Ascension, the day of the ascension must have been hard
for them because they knew this was Jesus to finish of leaving
them. I mean, after the resurrection,
he hadn't been with them all the time.
He appeared to them from time to time.
Saint Paul gives us a list of the appearances of Jesus, two
groups, you know, all the apostles together, just Peter,
500 disciples all at once, etcetera.
And then finally the appearance of the ascension.
And you could say finally, finally his appearance to Saint
Paul, to Seoul, on the road to Damascus.
But now they know this is it. He's gone.
He's not going to be with them even in that intermittent way
any further. And it must have been tough for
them. But what do they do?
They turn to, they go back to Jerusalem.
Saint Luke in the Acts tells us exactly how this goes.
They go back to Jerusalem and they go to the upper Room, where
presumably the same upper room where they'd had the Last
Supper. They go up to the upper room
where they were staying. Peter and John and James and
Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James
the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas the son of James.
All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer
together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his
brethren. So it's not by chance that Mary
is at the heart of the church, the church that's still waiting
to be born on Pentecost morning, you might say.
But Mary's at the heart of it because she's always at the
heart of the church. And in her, the church finds her
faith, her hope. She never lost hope, even at the
crucifixion. And her love, because she's the
mother. Son, behold your mother, woman,
behold your Son as Jesus had said to to them, even from the
cross, and even to say anything must have been a huge effort.
He said that he left us. Mary and the apostles realised
that she was the one to whom they must turn, and we always
continue to do that. And as the month of May
finishes, we want to keep on turning to her and asking her
for all the things that the church, the work and each of us
needs. I give you thanks, my God, for
the good resolutions, affections and inspirations which you have
communicated to me in this meditation.
I ask you for help to put them into effect.
My mother, Immaculate Saint Joseph, my father and Lord, my
guardian Angel, intercede for me.