Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Easter

  • Second Sunday of Easter

    Second Sunday of Easter

    Today’s Readings

    Today is the feast day for those of us who sometimes question things, and the apostle, St. Thomas, is our patron saint. And so today we can give Thomas a hard time for his unbelief, and we can disparage all those other “doubting Thomases” in our lives, or, maybe, we can just come to the Lord in our humility and say “My Lord and my God!”

    Because I’m sure we can all think of at least one time when we were reluctant to believe something, or had our faith tested, only to have Jesus stand before us and say, “Peace be with you.” I remember the time that it became apparent to me that the Lord was calling me to go to seminary after so many years being out of school. I had a long list of reasons why that wouldn’t work, why it couldn’t be done at this stage of my life, why anyone would be a better choice than me. And I never got a direct answer to any of that. Never. In some ways, all I got was Jesus standing in the midst of my questioning and saying to me “Peace be with you.” And six months later I was in seminary.

    You’ve had that same kind of experience at some point in your life, I’d bet. Maybe it was in college when you started really questioning your faith and felt like everything anyone had ever told you was a lie. Or maybe it was the time you were called to do something at Church, or even take a turn in your career, and couldn’t possibly believe that you were qualified to do that. Maybe it was the time it suddenly dawned on you that you were a parent, and had no idea how you could ever raise a child. It could even have been the time when you completely changed your career – as I did – and weren’t totally sure that was God’s will for you.

    Like Thomas, we want evidence, hard facts, a good hard look at the big picture, before we’re ready to jump in. We want to “see the mark of the nails in his hands and put our fingers into the nailmarks and put our hands into his side.” But that’s not faith. Some people say that seeing is believing, but faith tells us that believing is seeing. “Blessed are they,” Jesus says, “who have not seen but still believe.” We sometimes first have to make an act of faith, a leap of faith if you will, before we can really see what God is doing in our lives. And that’s the hard part, that’s the part that we, like Thomas, are reluctant to do.

    Jesus makes three invitations to us today. The first is to believe. Believe with all your heart and mind and soul. Believe first, and leave the seeing to later. Trust that God is with you, walking with you, guiding you, willing the best for you. Be ready to make that leap of faith. What God has in store for us is so much better than our puny plans for our lives. Be blessed by not seeing but still believing.

    The second invitation is to touch. “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says to Thomas, “and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” He makes that same invitation to us every time we walk up to receive Holy Communion. What a gift it is to be able to share in Christ’s wounds, to be bound up in his Passion, to live the resurrection and to be nourished by his very body and blood. Just like Thomas, we’re invited to touch so that we too might believe.

    The third invitation is to live a new day. The Gospel tells us that Jesus first came to the Apostles on the evening of the “first day of the week.” That detail isn’t there so that we know what day it is or can mark our calendars. In the Gospel, the “first day of the week” refers to the new day that Jesus is bringing about – a new day of faith, a new day of trust in God’s divine mercy, a new day of being caught up in God’s life. We are invited to that new day every time we gather for worship.

    We have doubts, periodically and sometimes persistently. But God does not abandon us in our doubt. Just like Thomas, he comes to us in the midst of our uncertainty and says to us: “Do not be unbelieving, but believe.” “Peace be with you.”

  • Easter Saturday

    Easter Saturday

    Today’s readings

    We are confronted in today’s Gospel with something we all have to struggle with, and that is a reluctance to believe. In the disciples’ case, it was a slowness to believe based on the fact that they didn’t really have the resources that we do – like the scriptures and hundreds of years of Church teaching. But still, they did have Jesus’ words, which they apparently didn’t understand, which they in some ways really didn’t believe.

    We come to Mass today having been there, done that. Like I said, we have more resources: the scriptures and the Church, and so it often seems like we should know better. And I think in some ways we do believe, at least in our heads. But when it comes to believing with our heats, it’s another thing entirely. How easy is it to believe that God loves us and has a plan for us when we are confronted with a difficult situation? When a loved one is dying? When we’ve lost a job? When the economy has eaten up our retirement? When we’ve just learned that we are seriously ill?

    But like the disciples, Jesus comes to us today and tells us that our faith must be the bedrock of our lives: helping us to be joyful in the good times and providing a source of strength in our bad times. And just when we are all thinking about ourselves – about what we need, about what we’re going through – just when the disciples are trying to figure out what to do next – Jesus makes it clear: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” Get back on the horse, get back into life, live the faith and be a witness. That’s the life of the disciple, that’s the life of faith.

    And we can do all that today and every day because of what we celebrate on this Easter Day: Christ is risen, and sin and death have been destroyed. God does have a plan for us, he does love us, and he has done all he needs to do to prove it.

  • Easter Thursday

    Easter Thursday

    Today’s readings

    The time between Easter and Pentecost is often referred to as the period of Mystagogy. Mystagogy is a Greek word meaning “looking back on the mysteries.” It is a time of unpacking what we have just been through, and coming to see, with eyes enlightened by faith, the meaning of things we may never have noticed before.

    The disciples in today’s Gospel reading are beginning that period of Mystagogy. They have seen the risen Lord, and now things they wondered about are all starting to make sense to them. Remember, they didn’t have the Gospels to guide them like we do; they had to live through all of this and it’s so clear from the readings of Lent and especially Holy Week that they were confounded by what Jesus was doing and what was happening to him. They were horrified and disillusioned and grieved by his death. But now, seeing him risen from the grave, they are beginning to make sense of it all. As the Gospel says today, “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” and they came to see how the Scriptures applied to Jesus.

    This is a special period for those we just received into the Church at the Easter Vigil. They will use this time of Mystagogy to grow in their new-found faith. It will be a time for them, too, to look back on the mysteries. They will reflect on their faith journey that began in childhood and eventually brought them here. They will reflect on the wonderful rites they have experienced, from the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens, to their Election by the Bishop early in Lent, to the Scrutinies we witnessed with them, all the way to their Baptism, Confirmation and First Eucharist on Holy Saturday night. They will see God at work in their lives and make sense of things they may have been confused about before.

    But this Mystagogy isn’t just limited to the disciples and our Neophytes. We are all mystagogues. Mystagogy, I think, is a life-long process, and all of us, converts and cradle Catholics alike, spend the rest of our lives unpacking the mysteries, reflecting on our lives of faith, coming to see who Jesus is for us in whole new ways, appreciating more deeply the love and grace poured out on us every day. Every day is a new opportunity for Mystagogy, and an opportunity to exclaim with our Psalmist today, seeing the wonderful mysteries that have unfolded for us, “O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!”

  • Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    “Do not be amazed!” – I just love that line in the Gospel. We have to get behind the sentiment of that statement today if we are to really understand what this day is all about. We believe in a God who is very surprising. All through the Bible, we can read stories of people trying to come to terms with God, and just when they thought they had him all figured out, he bursts in to their complacency and says, “No, that’s not it, you just don’t get me at all, do you?”

    That happens to us too, doesn’t it? God surprises us all the time. Most often, people note the bad surprises: the death of a loved one, an illness, loss of a job. But those things are not of God. God didn’t make those surprises; he allows them in this imperfect world, but they are not his will for us. What is his will for us is what surprises us: the grace to deal with a difficult situation with a strength we never knew we had, the help of a friend or loved one at just the right time, words spoken by a stranger or an acquaintance that help us to find the ability to journey on from where we are. And in our surprise, God says, “Do not be amazed!”

    To really get how surprising this day must have been for Jesus’ disciples, we have to have been involved in the story to this point. Jesus had been doing wonderful, amazing things: healing the sick, raising the dead, speaking words of challenge and hope. The Jewish leaders of the time became more and more uncomfortable with his message, seeing it as blasphemy and a rejection of everything good and holy. More and more, their anger raged up, and many times they attempted to arrest him. Finally, the movement against him rises to a fever pitch. Judas, who thought he would get rich off this wonder-worker Jesus grows disillusioned to the point that he is willing to hand Jesus over to them.

    Jesus’ hour had come: he was put through a farce of a trial, brutally beaten and contemptuously treated. Finally he is nailed to a cross and suffers hours of agony and abandonment by most of his disciples before he gives us his spirit at last. All seemed darker than dark. Jesus is placed in a tomb that was not his own by people who had just been acquaintances. His friends have fled in fear. His mother and some women wept at the end of it all. Things couldn’t have been worse or more hopeless.

    But then came the morning. Some of the women go to anoint his body for its burial, and just when they are wondering who is going to help them roll the stone away so they can get in to the tomb, they come upon the tomb, open and empty. They had to be utterly amazed – they probably didn’t even know what had actually happened. But as they stood there, mouths hanging open, thoughts reeling in their minds, the messenger appears: “Do not be amazed!” Jesus said he would rise, and rise he did, hammering home the point that hopelessness is no obstacle to God’s power, that fear is no match for grace, that death and darkness are nothing compared to God’s great love. Do not be amazed!

    Even that is not where the wonder of it all stopped. In their joy, the disciples eventually recollected themselves and were able to go out and tell people what had happened. Christ, crucified, overcame death to rise to new life. In the light of the resurrection, they came to understand what Jesus had always preached and also received the grace of the Spirit so that they could preach it to others. Their preaching shaped the Church, guiding it through the centuries to our own day. Today we gather not just to remember an amazing event that happened two thousand years ago, but rather to experience the joy of that resurrection with those women at the tomb, with the disciples who heard about it from them, with all the people from every time and place, on earth and in heaven, all of us who have had the Gospel preached to us. We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus as one. Do not be amazed!

    And the marvel continues: the death and resurrection of Christ has had an effect on this cold and dark and sinful world. Through that wonderful saving action, the finality of our death has been obliterated, the vicious cycle of our sins has been erased. We have been freed from it all through the power of grace, freely given if we will freely accept it, lavished out on all of us prodigal ones who return to God with sorrow for our sins and hope for forgiveness. We have truly been saved and made free. Do not be amazed!

    We have also been given the great gift of eternal life. In his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ has broken the chains of death and risen triumphant from the grave. Because of that, our own graves will never be our final resting place, pain and sorrow and death will be temporary, and we who believe and follow our risen Lord have hope of life that lasts forever. Just as Christ’s own time on the cross and in the grave was brief, so our own pain, death, and burial will be as nothing compared to the ages of new life we have yet to receive. We have hope in these days because Christ who is our hope has overcome the obstacles to our living. Do not be amazed!

    Back on the evening of Holy Thursday, when the Church gathered to commemorate the giving of the Eucharist, the entrance antiphon told us what was to come:

    We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    for he is our salvation, our life and our resurrection;
    through him we are saved and made free.

    And this morning, we gather to celebrate that that is truly what has happened. Through the cross and resurrection we are saved and made free to live the salvation, life and resurrection that God always intended for us to have. We should glory in the cross! Do not be amazed!

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Today's readings [display_podcast]

    tongues-of-fireIn a few moments we will stand together and pray these beautiful words:

    We believe in the Holy Spirit,
    the Lord, the giver of life,
    who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
    With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
    He has spoken through the Prophets.

    And we pray those words so often, that they are probably something of second nature to us.  They may even pass right out of our lips without us ever stopping to think about what it really means to believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.  And that’s too bad, because people through the ages have literally suffered and died for these words.  The writing of them into our Profession of Faith was not done without some heated debate and many tears.  These words about the Holy Spirit unfortunately were partly the cause of the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox.  And so as we pray them, we need to take special note of them, knowing that it is never the intent of the Holy Spirit that we remain divided and when we pray these words we must remember our brothers and sisters who gave of themselves so that we might have faith.

    So, what does it mean to believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life?  The Holy Spirit informs our faith and guides our life, so our belief in that Spirit ought to be evident, it should look like something.  If we really, truly believe in the Holy Spirit, our lives should be a certain way, and I think our readings today give us some attributes of the Spirit-led life.

    In our first reading, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit in a very public setting.  They were all in one place together, and the Spirit descended upon them with a strong, driving wind and tongues of fire.  This Holy Spirit enabled them to proclaim the Good News in the various tongues of the then-known world.  Every foreign person in Rome was able to hear the Word in his or her own language.  Now being a person who has very little facility for foreign languages, this would be my dream gift of the Spirit!  I know un pocito of Spanish, and most days struggle a bit with English!  But here the disciples are able to speak in all the languages of the world, enabling the Word to be heard by people of every nation.

    Whether language is our gift or not, we too are filled with the Spirit and sent forth to preach to all nations.  That the Word was heard by people of every nation in their own tongue was evidence of the fact that Jesus was quite serious when he commanded the apostles to go forth and make disciples of all nations.  God really does want the Word to be known by every person everywhere, and he expects us to preach it.  Maybe we will be sent off in mission to speak to people in their own language.  Or maybe we’ll have to put the Word out there in a way that people in our own time and place can understand.  We’re in a culture that very rarely if ever speaks the word of God, and it’s evident that so many people have lost the ability to relate to God.  It’s up to us to make the Gospel known to them by preaching it with our lives.  As St. Francis said, “Preach the Gospel always.  If necessary, use words.”  People will come to know the Gospel as they see us living it.  Love is a universal language.  Joy is evidence of the presence of God.  People can relate to love and joy and peace and grace and kindness and compassion.  All we have to do is to live that way, and people will come to know the Lord.  The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to preach the Word to people of every nation and tongue.

    In the second reading, St. Paul preaches to the Corinthians that people of the Spirit can do everything.  “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;” he says, “there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.”  Now, I admit, some days we all get out of bed thinking there’s no way we can do anything really good.  Some days just breathing seems to be a major accomplishment.  So the ability to do everything is something that for most of us – me included! – seems so far out of our grasp.

    But we don’t have to be the one person who does everything.  We are all united in the Spirit, and together we can do everything.  We all have some gifts.  We have celebrated those gifts this year as our parish has focused on stewardship as our theme.  And as St. Paul tells us, the gifts of the Spirit are never given just for us.  We are meant to use them for the good of others and the glory of God:  “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.”  The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to do everything, when we share the gifts we have been given in concert with all of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

    And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus forgives his apostles and calls on them to forgive others.  Now we’re getting to the end of the Gospel of John, a Gospel that has been a kind of mirror of the book of Genesis.  Both the book of Genesis and the Gospel of John begin with the words, “In the beginning…”  And that’s not an accident.  John is doing that for the very specific reason of showing us how God is re-creating the world.  Just as the book of Genesis showed the first creation of the world, so the Gospel shows us the re-creation of the world in Christ.  If the Gospels show us anything, they show us how we need to be re-created.

    The apostles were gathered on that first day of the week, the day of creation, but also the day of the Resurrection.  They are afraid, the Gospel says today, “for fear of the Jews.”  They knew that what happened to Jesus could certainly happen to them.  But there’s more to it than that.  Jesus has risen now, and they know that.  Gathered together, they are a group ashamed of the way they treated Christ on his last day.  They let him down by denying him and running away.  They had sinned, and their sin filled them with shame and fear.  The were hiding behind locked doors.  They needed to be re-created.

    They needed to be re-created just as much as all of us need to be re-created when we sin.  When we treat others poorly, or withhold compassion, or don’t forgive, or let our relationships deteriorate into sin, when we spend too much time on the internet looking at the wrong things, or cheat on a business deal or in school, when we waste the gifts of the earth or any of many other ways we can go wrong, when we do any of these things, we need to be re-created.  We too can find ourselves behind locked doors, afraid of what will happen to us and ashamed of the way we have treated God, ourselves, and others.  We need to be re-created almost every day, don’t we?

    But just as Jesus could break through the locked doors that kept the apostles cooped up, so he can break through our own locked doors.  And what he said to them then is what he says to us now:  “Peace be with you.”  That isn’t a fluffy, kumbaya kind of peace, but a peace that re-creates us from the inside out.  It’s a peace that wipes away our sins and gives us a second chance. 
    Or even a third or fourth or nine thousandth chance.  “Peace be with you.”  We receive this same kind of peace in Confession when the priest says to us in the prayer of absolution: “Through the ministry of the Church, may God give you pardon and peace…” 

    But having been forgiven, the apostles then and us now are told that that peace is something that has to be spread around.  We forgiven, re-created children of God must now reach out to others and invite them to experience that same peace.  “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,” Jesus says, “and whose sins you retain are retained.”  The cost of retaining any sin is disastrous.  In terms of the Church, the only sins that are really retained are those that are unconfessed and unrepented.  There is no peace possible when that happens.  But we can sinfully retain others’ sins when we refuse to forgive them, when we bind them up with stereotyping, discrimination and hate.  This is not the way that has been laid out for us.  This is not the example we have received.  We have received peace, and we are commanded to give peace in return.  We must be a people who forgive because we are a people who have been forgiven and at a great cost.  The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to be forgiven and to forgive.

    And so, we who believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, are a people who are enabled to proclaim the Word to every person in our words and deeds, a people who can do everything as we use our gifts in communion with our brothers and sisters, a people who can forgive as we have been forgiven.  We could never do any of this on our own, of course.  It takes the Holy Spirit alive in us and in our world to make all things new.  And so every day we pray with the Psalmist: “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”

  • Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today's readings [display_podcast]

     

    There are two kinds of communication that are spoken of in today’s Gospel.  The first is rumor, and the second is truth.  The rumor in the Gospel came about as a result of a misinterpretation of the private conversation that Jesus and John were having.  Jesus tells Peter basically that it’s none of his business what Jesus wanted for John; Peter’s business is to follow Jesus.  But then even that got misinterpreted and a rumor started spreading that John would not die before Jesus returned.  What a tangled web rumor can weave, can’t it?

     

    But the second kind of communication is truth.  And while it often might seem that truth is in short supply, John says that there’s more than enough to go around.  If every bit of truth that Jesus said or gave witness to were written down, the world wouldn’t be able to contain the books to hold it.  So we have to be the people to choose truth over rumor.  There’s plenty of truth to tell, plenty of good news to share, plenty of gospel to which to bear witness.  There’s so much truth out there, that even Paul’s prison couldn’t keep him from proclaiming it.

     

    Blessed are those who proclaim the truth.  As the Psalmist says of them, “The just will gaze on your face, O Lord.”

     

  • May Crowning

    May Crowning

    Today's Readings: Acts 1:12-14, John 19:25-27
    [Mass for the school children.]

    There is a prayer, the “Hail Mary” that we say all the time.  How many of you know it, boys and girls?  Since we are crowning Mary today, I thought it might be a good thing to talk about that wonderful prayer and what it means, because just like every familiar prayer, we can sometimes forget what it means when we say it so often.

    “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”

    Mary never thought she was great all by herself.  She always knew that it was because the Lord had chosen her and that the Lord had given her his grace, his help, that she could live a holy life and be the mother of Jesus.

    “blessed art thou among women…”

    Because Mary was holy, she is able to help all women to lead a holy life.  When they follow her as mothers or even as women of faith, they have a wonderful role model.  She was the first of all the apostles, the queen of the apostles, and that was because of her faith.  She is an example for all women, and really all people of faith.

    “and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

    Mary was the first earthly temple that Jesus was to be in.  Because of God’s grace and her faith, she was the perfect home for Jesus to be born in.  And she said yes to that, even though she wasn’t sure how it would happen or what it would mean.  She was faithful to God by saying “yes.”

    “Holy Mary, Mother of God…”

    It almost seems weird for us to say that Mary could ever be the mother of God.  But Jesus was just as much a human as he was God.  Every human has a mother, and so Mary is the human mother of Jesus who is God and man.

    “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

    This is what makes us celebrate Mary today.  She is not just the mother of Jesus.  She is also the mother of John, the “favorite disciple” in our Gospel reading today.  And she is also the mother of you and me, Jesus’ “favorite disciples” today.  Just like every other good mother, Mary prays for all of her children, including you and me, all the time – now and at the hour of our death.

    Sometimes we forget how important familiar prayers are.  They say a lot, though, about what we believe.  The “Hail Mary” says everything about why we crown Mary as Queen of the Apostles, Queen of the Church, and Queen of Heaven and Earth today.  She was faithful, she said yes to God’s will, she prays for us all the time.  Mary is the mother of all of us, and as we come close to Mother’s Day, it is so appropriate that we give Mary the gift of our love and devotion today. 

  • Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today's readings [display_podcast]

     

    Sometimes we get an idea and it seems well, a little uncomfortable.  We may well have had a call or even a gentle moving from the Lord, and are afraid to act on it.  Today’s Scriptures speak to those of us who are sometimes hesitant to do what the Lord is calling on us to do.

     

    I think St. Paul must have been exhausted by this point in his life.  As we hear of him in our reading from Acts today, he is saved from one angry mob, only to learn he is to go to another.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.  He has borne witness to Christ in Jerusalem, but now he has to go and do it all over again in Rome.  And underneath it all, he knows there is a good chance he is going to die.

     

    In the Gospel today, Jesus prays for all of his disciples, and also for all those who “will believe in me through their word.”  And that, of course, includes all of us.  He prays that we would be unified and would be protected from anything or anyone who might seek to divide us from each other, or even from God.  He says that we are a gift to him, and that he wishes us to be where he will be for all eternity.

     

    What we see in our Liturgy today is that God keeps safe the ones he loves.  If he calls us to do something, he will sustain us through it.  Maybe we’ll have to witness to Jesus all over again or we’ll have to defend our faith against people in our community or workplace or school who just don’t understand.  We might well feel hesitant at these times, but we can and must go forward, acting on God’s call.  When we do that, we can make our own prayer in the words of the Psalm today: “Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.”

     

  • Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today's readings [display_podcast]

     

    The two readings we have in today’s Liturgy of the Word are a bit of a coincidence.  We have been reading, these Easter days, sequentially from the Acts of the Apostles in the first reading, and for the Gospel from John.  Today we see both central characters wrapping up their life’s work and taking leave of those they have ministered to and with.

     

    In our first reading, St. Paul takes leave of the Church at Ephesus.  He recalls that he has been diligent in preaching the Truth to them, and clearly feels that he has lived his vocation as best he could.  He takes leave of them, knowing he will not see them again, but confident that his preaching and example, if carefully followed, would lead them to the Lord.  He could not be held responsible for any of them finding they had lost the way.

     

    In the Gospel, Jesus prepares to take leave of his apostles and disciples, and is offering a prayer to his Father.  He prays that his death would glorify the Father – which of course it would! – and prays for those he will leave behind.  He too knows that his preaching and example would lead them where he was soon to go.  He in a sense gives them back to the Father, since their lives had been reclaimed by his ministry.

     

    We all have people for whom we are responsible.  They may be children, spouses, students, coworkers, neighbors.  Some people have been put in our lives for the express purpose of their formation in the Gospel.  We are expected to preach the Truth to them, in word and most especially in example.  When we have done that to the best of our ability, we know that when the day comes to take leave of them, they will have all the tools to live a life of faith and find their way to God.

     

    And so today we pray for those for whom we are responsible.  We cannot live their lives for them; all we can do is to teach them as best we can and provide the best example possible.  We pray for them, knowing that God can bring to fruition whatever it is that we have planted.

     

  • Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

    Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

    Today's readings [display_podcast]

     

    ascension-iconCan you imagine what was going through the disicples’ minds as they stood there watching the Ascension of the Lord?  Think about all that they’ve been through.  Three years following this Jesus whose words were compelling and whose miracles were amazing and whose way of life was uplifting.  But still, there was something about him that they just never seemed to get.  He had no problem claiming to be the Christ, the Anointed One, and so their strong cultural definition of the Messiah was something they projected onto Jesus, but time after time it just never fit.  Then he gets arrested, tried in a farce of a proceeding, put to death like a common criminal and buried for three days.  After that, he is no longer in the tomb, but has risen from the dead and appeared to them many times.  Now they’re gathered forty days later, and he promises the gift of the Holy Spirit.  They breathlessly ask the question that has always been on their minds, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”  They still don’t get it.

     

    And so Jesus promises them the Holy Spirit again, and ascends into the sky.  Can you imagine it?  It’s like a roller coaster of emotions for them.  Their heads had to be spinning, they had to be completely lost as to what to do now.  First he was dead and buried, then he came back, and now he’s gone again.  What on earth are they to do now?  Well, the two mysterious men dressed in white garments have all the advice they’re going to get: “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.”

     

    Which only leaves a whole lot more questions, and their basic questions still unanswered.  When will he return?  When will he restore the kingdom?  What is it the Holy Spirit is going to do for them?  Well, soon enough they find out, of course, and we’ll talk about that next week.  For now, it’s enough for us to see what this feast of the Ascension means for us.  I think it makes three points that we must be ready to fold into our faith life.

     

    First, Christ promises us that he will be with us always.  And that’s just what Jesus says to the disciples – and to us! – in the very last words of the very last verse of the very last chapter of Matthew’s Gospel: “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”  With that, of course, he ascends out of their sight, and so that must have been a confusing promise for the disciples to hear – at least right now.  But this is such an essential point of faith for us to get.  Just as the first disciples continued to know Christ’s presence in their gathering, in their worshipping, and in their serving, so we continue to know Christ’s presence in those same ways. 

     

    We believe that Christ is present whenever we gather in his name.  He said as much to us in another place: “Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I am there in their midst.” (Matthew 18:20)  We reverence the presence of Christ in one another and can feel him present among us as we pray.  The song we have sung this year – “You’re the only Jesus” – celebrates that we may well be the person who introduces someone else to Christ, that they will come to know Christ as they come to experience our love and care for them.  Christ is present when we gather.

     

    We believe that Christ is present when we worship.  The Word of God, as it is proclaimed in the Church, is not just a nice story or an interesting precept for life.  We believe that God is present in the very proclaiming of the Word itself.  And so at times we may hear the Scriptures and experience a stirring in our heart that leads us to a new way of thinking or acting.  This is because Christ is present – in a sacramental way – in the proclamation of the Word.  And the Sacraments themselves make Christ present when we celebrate them in worship, and we experience that in a special way when we celebrate the Eucharist and receive the body and blood of our Lord in Communion.  We have celebrated that in a special way this weekend with our children who have received First Eucharist.  But we celebrate that every time we gather for Mass, whether it be our First Eucharist or our 3,492nd Eucharist!  Christ is present to us when we worship.

     

    We believe that Christ is present when we serve.  Deep down, we know that the really great things we do are never the result of our own efforts alone.  It’s the Holy Spirit who has prompted us to act or serve or move or speak in certain way.  That same Spirit gives us strength and talent and ability and energy we would never know on our own.  When we serve authentically, aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit, we know that Christ is present.  So it’s not us feeding the hungry, it’s Christ.  It’s not us proclaiming the Word, it’s Christ.  It’s not us leading a religious education class, it’s Christ.  It’s not us doing any of this, it’s always Christ, whose hands and feet and lips we have become by the virtue of our baptism.  Christ is present when we serve in his name.

     

    Jesus promised to be with us always, and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit among us, we find him present in our gathering, in our worshipping, and in our serving.  Jesus is with us in our ordinary and extraordinary moments.  Jesus is present in us just as surely as is the breath of life.  And today he promises that that presence will never end, that he will be with us to the end of time.

     

    The second application of the Ascension to our lives is that Jesus has gone to heaven to prepare a place for us.  Now, clearly he wasn’t returning to heaven to put a fresh coat of paint on the walls or polish the gold-covered streets.  He goes to heaven to pave the way, because we had lost the way, affected as we all are by original sin and by the sins of our life.  Since we did not know the way, he prepares it for us, opening the door, so to speak, and greeting us.  So we believers who have forged a relationsh
    ip with our Lord can now look to him to see how to get to that heavenly reward.  All we have to do is follow, and we will find ourselves in that place God intended for us from the beginning. 

     

    And the third application of this feast in our lives is that the Christian Mission has been entrusted to our hands.  Christ has ascended into heaven, he has returned to the Father.  So on this feast of the Ascension of the Lord, we can be like the disciples, standing there staring blankly into the heavens, or we can start to live our lives with the expectation of the Lord’s return, as the disciples were told by the two men dressed in white.  Now it’s time for us to take up the Cross, to preach the Word in our words and actions, and to witness to the joy of Christ’s presence among us.  If people are ever going to come to know Christ, if they are ever going to be challenged to grow in their faith, if they are ever going to know that there is something greater than themselves, well most likely they’re going to come to know all of that in us.  We have to be transparent in our preaching and our living so that people won’t be caught up on us, but will come through us to see Jesus, to see the Father, to experience the Spirit.  We are the ones commanded to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…”  As Cardinal George is fond of saying, the Church does not have a mission … the mission has a Church, and we the Church have to take up that mission and run with it.  It is entrusted to us now.

     

    And so today, in the words of the Psalmist, God mounts his throne to shouts of joy.  We are joyous in living our life as Christians, assured of God’s abiding presence until the end of time, looking forward to our heavenly reward, and living the mission for all to see.  A blare of trumpets for the Lord!