Ex Rus Ad Mundum [From the village to the world]

The Ascension of Our Lord

29 May, 2014

FROM THE VILLAGE TO THE WORLD, was the commission of the Apostles. A truly formidable mission considering who they were: fishermen, labourers, artisans and a tax collector – lowly men with a lofty task.

We are not talking about particularly exemplary men but rather of very ordinary folk like you or I. The eleven disciples gathered with Jesus on the Galilean mountain top were not men of particularly unshakable faith, nor of particularly strong evangelical fervour. They were not, at that time at least, the glorious Apostles of saintly memory that we celebrate today.

The story of salvation, which takes a new turn today with the departure of the physical presence of Jesus from the world, is to be brought to completion through the mission of those he leaves behind. The salvation Christ wrought was not in the moment and just for those at that moment but for all time. 

The Ascension shows us that the life, death and resurrection of Christ is not just an historical fact affecting first-century Jews but an eternal reality for the whole world. In the Ascension, Christ returns to the Father not just as The Word, as he was in the beginning, but as The Word Made Flesh. He takes with him no-one and yet everyone, for he ascends in the flesh alone on this day but with the promise of his return, when all that are his will return to the Father’s house with him. 

In the Ascension, Christ sanctifies the flesh to which he chose to be born; immortalising it for eternity, by the glory of God, uniting for all time a perfected creation with its Creator. And in so doing, he elevates all men, body and soul, into perfect communion with the Godhead.

His saving work accomplished, how easy would it have been for Christ, the agent of creation, to bring an end to all things on the day of his Ascension, taking those few, who understood and truly believed, with him into eternal life? Had it been so, I wonder how many of the eleven would have gone with him that day. Certainly not the un-named few in Matthew’s Gospel account, who hesitated when they saw the Lord.

Instead, God has desired in Christ to extend a new covenant to men of all nations, that all may come to know and love him. And so here we are today, remembering the day on which our Blessed Lord ascended to heaven, making the very flesh with which we are made one with God. And we remember on this day, how his salvation is to be brought to all nations – not through glorious manifestations of the risen Christ as powerful proof, but through men of flesh to men of flesh with the power of faith.

And so let us think of the eleven on the top of that mountain, alone, with their Lord departed and a mission imparted. A seemingly impossible mission to bring an improbable truth from the towns and villages from which they came, across seas and mountains, to all nations.

That we are here today celebrating the Ascension of Christ on every continent of the world is a testament to the success of the mission of these eleven ordinary men and, more so, to the power of the Holy Spirit to lift the lowliness of our weak flesh; to take our knowledge and inspire in it faith; to take our faith and move us to conversion of life; to take our lives and use them for evangelisation – that the Church of the Lord, of which we are the body and he the head, may grow in number and strength of faith to greet him, when in the same way as he has left us today, he comes again in glory to lead our mortal bodies to immortal life in the presence of God.

Pray then, my brothers, for we stand on the mountain top with the eleven, with a mission to fulfil and imperfections aplenty that make us unworthy messengers of the good news of salvation and hesitant in the presence of our Lord. Pray not for strength in yourself, but for receptiveness to the grace of the Holy Spirit, who alone guides us, Christ’s body the Church, to continue the saving work of Christ for the glory of God the Father. Amen.