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The Ascension of the Lord

Homily by Fr. David Wessels, SJ
The Ascension of the Lord [A] at 12 Noon Mass
St. Ignatius Church, Tokyo

 

 


[SCRIPTURE READINGS
Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11
Letter to the Ephesians 1:17-23
Gospel according to Matthew 28:16-20]

INTRODUCTION

 My brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the great feast of the Ascension of our Lord. As you know, we pray in the Profession of Faith, the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe…in Jesus Christ…he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty…” This is one of the foundations of our faith. We rejoice in the glory that Jesus receives as he ascends to the Father. It is a farewell, but a farewell like none other. For Jesus tells the disciples: “I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.” At the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, he calls Jesus Immanuel, which means God-with-us. Now we see that after his farewell from this earth, he is indeed with us forever, until the end of time.


HOMILY

You may think that the Ascension somehow gets squeezed in between the Resurrection and Pentecost. We have only one more week until Pentecost. In terms of the liturgical year, there are only a few days after the Ascension and before the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. But when you think about what the Ascension means, you can easily understand how important it is.


Before Jesus came, the Scriptures taught about God’s Kingdom, and especially about the coming of the Kingdom of the Messiah, the Christ, whom the Jewish people were waiting for. But as we see in the Gospels, the people did not understand well what this Kingdom meant. Even Jesus’s closest disciples did not realize what it meant at the time of the Ascension.


Jesus spent the first thirty years of his life in a hidden life at Nazareth, and only then began to preach the Kingdom of God—love of God and neighbor, a Kingdom of truth and of God’s will that everyone be saved, a message of “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” as Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel.


As the first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, says, Jesus showed himself alive to the apostles after his Passion, appearing to them and telling them about the kingdom of God. He continued to tell them about his Kingdom, as he had done during his public ministry, explaining that it was not a political kingdom of Israel as many expected, but God’s Kingdom, the Messianic Kingdom of truth, which included his Passion and would be completed when he returned again.


Now, in the Ascension, we see Jesus fully entering that Kingdom, enthroned at the right hand of the Father, from where he had come to our world to save us. But at the same time, he promises to remain with us until the end of time and sends us out to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. This is indeed a very special moment in the life of Jesus, and in the life of the Church, of all of us. To remain with us, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit, which we will celebrate next week on the Feast of Pentecost.


As you know, the Hebrew word Messiah becomes the Greek word Christ, which we use in English and Japanese and many other languages. We use this word as a very special title of Jesus, in fact we often use of as his second name, as if his full name is simply Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of heaven, the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached, is truly the Messianic Kingdom, the Kingdom of Christ, who is enthroned today. The King has his enthronement ceremony, as it were.


Fortunately, we don’t have to be confused now like the earthly disciples of Jesus, who often misunderstood what the Kingdom of Christ meant. Today we take the name of Christ. We dare to call ourselves Christians, we are proud to bear the name Christian, as we strive to be worthy followers of Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah who has ascended on high. We live as his witnesses to the ends of the earth.


I hope you will allow me to end my homily today in a little unusual way. I was struck by the line in today’s Responsorial Psalm: “”All peoples, clap your hands….” I was thinking of some special way to celebrate the Ascension. Maybe some of you will remember the time before the Second Vatican Council when we used a symbol to mark the Feast of the Ascension. After the reading of the Gospel, the altar server brought out the snuffer and extinguished the flame on the Paschal Candle. It was as if Jesus had gone to heaven now, so we put out the flame to symbolize that. Now we celebrate the Easter Season by keeping the Paschal Candle lit from Easter all the way to Pentecost. But it is nice to have a symbol to help us know and remember the Ascension.


I was thinking that nowadays, when somebody finishes a talk or leaves a stage, we usually clap our hands. When we think of Jesus’s return to the Father in glory at the Ascension, that might be a nice way to celebrate and make this Feast something special. Also, at the end of a music concert, especially here in Japan, the audience will usually clap more and more in hope of an encore. Of course, we, too, are waiting for Jesus’s return, his Second Coming, and can clap for that, also. So please join with me in the spirit of the Responsorial Psalm: “God mounts his throne to shouts of joy; a blare of trumpets for the Lord…Alleluia…All you peoples clap your hands…”

[Everyone joined in clapping their hands.]
 

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