Pastor’s Reflection

“Where He Goes, We Go.”

Ascension has been moved around across the US landscape. It is too important to leave it on Thursday of the seventh Easter week.  Most working Catholics tended to miss it.  So, local bishops have moved it to the last Easter Sunday.  It is stark.  The historic, bodily presence of Jesus has come to an end.

Ascension celebrates Jesus completing his mission, his returning to be at the side the Lord God, envisioning and empowering his followers to do what he did.   HOW? He planted his vision within them…the ability to see life as he saw it. To hope for what he hoped for. Jesus used his blood to plant among the human family a community of disciples to link hands and say the OUR FATHER over the world. There is power in this sign. It can’t be stopped.

And when Jesus left the world, he did not necessarily say goodbye to his friends.   He said, “I am with you always until the end of the world.”

Acts of the Apostles pictures the disciples staring into the heavens after the vanishing Lord.   And the two men dressed in white tell them that they are looking in the wrong direction.   I ‘ve done that. We have a God seated on high whose glance is real low.   Why stand there with your head up in the clouds? WHY LOOK FOR THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD?   He will return in the same way you saw him go.   Faith in the resurrected Lord takes one’s attention in other directions: “Within” to the Christ planted in human hearts. And “around” at the Christ planted within the brothers and sisters. But sometimes we like the disciples, we are looking for him…crying for him…and we just can’t seem to find him and to get our hands around him.

In Scripture and Eucharist, the power of broken bread and shared cup is made a sacrament. Even though the Lord is enthroned in heaven, he will continue to work with the community of his disciples. We are that community, baptized and anointed, fed with the Eucharist, ordained as priests, confirmed and forgiven. And finally we are sent out so the world may know abundant hope and abundant life.

The Letter to the Ephesians this weekend prays that we have “the Spirit of wisdom and insight to know him more clearly…to know the great hope to which he has called you, to know the glorious heritage given to the church,   to know the immeasurable scope of his power in us who believe… To know the fullness of him who fills the universe in all its parts.” That conviction makes great signs possible in the church. The conviction that he will come back gives us great possibilities.  HE HAS BEEN GLORIFIED AND WE WILL BE RAISED UP WITH HIM. Where he goes we go.

So the feast of the Ascension is not a good bye, after all. It is a hello. Hello to grace. Hello to salvation. Hello to fellowship. Hello to glory. Full authority has been given to me. Go. Baptize. Teach and Know.   A special tender blessing to our Mothers.

A gentle week,
Fr. Michael Weldon, OFM