In the
Ascension, Jesus promises us the
hope of life everlasting
Luke
begins
his Gospel by telling Theophilus that
he is going to write a history. Luke
has investigated the testimonies of
those who knew Jesus and is writing
down this history so that his friend
can realize the certainty of the
teachings.
Today’s
first
reading from the Acts of the Apostles
and today’s Gospel are both written by
Luke. They are the fruit of that
investigation for his friend
Theophilus, and they teach us several
lessons. The first lesson is for the
skeptic.
The
contemporary
world is fast-paced and has little
time for stories about a God who
became man. It has even less time for
a God who suffered, died, rose from
the dead and then ascended into
heaven. The skeptic feels more
comfortable with the notion that this
is all just a metaphor. The modern man
is oftentimes uncomfortable about
visions of a Jesus who appears, walks
through walls and ascends into the
clouds.
However,
Luke’s
language in the first reading is
unequivocal. He writes that [Jesus]
presented himself alive to [the
apostles] by many proofs after he had
suffered, appearing to them during
forty days. This was not just an
occasional occurrence misinterpreted
by a few well-meaning fishermen. This
was a prolonged series of visits by
Jesus over a month long. It involved
many people in different places.
The
first
lesson, then, is that this is not just
metaphor. This is reality. And since
this story about Jesus is real, then
we have a second lesson from Luke. He
tells us that Jesus made a promise. He
promised to give us something. Jesus
promised that we would receive the
power of the Holy Spirit. Paul, in the
second reading, tells us what this
means. Our heart’s eye will be
enlightened so that we may know what
is the hope that belongs to [Jesus’]
call.
The
Spirit
will be given to us by Jesus and we
will then see. In fact, we will be
able to truly see the visible and the
invisible, as we say in the Creed. We
will see the hope hidden in our world.
By the power of the Holy Spirit we
will see, but we will see not simply
for our own sake.
The
third
lesson is that Jesus promises, in the
Gospel of Luke, that we will be
witnesses for Him in the world. The
Greek word there is martyr. We will be
martyrs for Him. We will be
proclaimers of the repentance, of the
forgiveness of sins. We will be
preachers perhaps not by words but
certainly by the lives we choose to
live.
The
last lesson Jesus gives us is the
sweetest, for we are promised that He
will return to us. He will recognize
us by our witness. He will embrace us
and will lead us to the heavenly
Jerusalem with great joy. In the
Ascension, then, we have the promise
of eternal life for a life lived well
here on earth.
The
Ascension
also speaks to our hopes, that where
Jesus has gone, we one day will
follow. We can be confident that
Jesus, who intercedes for us at the
right hand of the Father, will see to
it that we have everything we need to
grow in holiness, and that one day we
will join him in paradise.
As
we celebrate this great feast of our
faith, let us hear with refreshed
hearts the promise of Christ to be
with us always. Let us also recall his
promise to send the Holy Spirit, that
we might be enlightened in faith, so
we can be faithful in all ways to our
new identity in Christ. Let us pray
that as we go forth from this
celebration we might be filled with
the hope of eternal life in God, a
hope founded in the person of Christ,
who is both fully human and fully
divine.
