The Solemnity of the Ascension, Sunday, May 16, 2021

Acts 1:1–11

In the first book, Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught until the day he was taken up, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While meeting with them, he enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for “the promise of the Father about which you have heard me speak; for John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”  When they had gathered together they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight. While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”

It is interesting that it is St. Luke, the Greek Evangelist writing for a Greek readership, who describes how some of the disciples asked the Lord Jesus even after his Resurrection and his extended explanations to his followers about what his Death and Rising accomplished for them, whether he was then going to reestablish the kingdom of Israel.  Luke does this in order to make an early distinction between the Jewish Christians and the later Gentile Christians.  That is, if the Jewish believers could be wrong about the Lord raising up a new kingdom of Israel even when it was plain that he would not, then they could be wrong about other things, such as their insistence that Gentiles needed circumcision in order to become Christians.  The only other Evangelist who might have included this was St. Mark, but his readership in Rome did not face the same pressures.  

The great question about the Ascension is why did Jesus leave us?  Of course, he did not abandon us.  He is present among us most especially in the Most Blessed Sacrament.  Yet he is not visibly present.  The Lord ascended into heaven not to go away from us, but to draw us closer to him.  If he remains here, then we would not see him there.  Throughout the Gospels, the Lord draws on the Apostles.  He leads them.  He does not wander, but he leads them very purposefully.  He does the same with us now.  And the way to him, the way through which he leads us, is his own life, for he is “the way, the truth, and the life”.  We imitate his life and follow in his footsteps in lives of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and preaching.

We celebrate this day as a day of the Lord’s glory revealed on earth, and as a day on which he bids us follow him.