Ascension Thursday 2019

Over the last few weeks, I've been seeing all the photos start rolling in from the various graduations, Kindergarten, High School, and College.  There's a few more this week and next.  There's something especially about high school and college graduation that says, "it's time to move on now," you're a grown-up now, it's time to act like it.  Especially when a person moves out of the house for the first time, even if it's just to school.  There are a hundred things we have to learn how to do…things we always took for granted.   I remember going to college the first time…standing in front of the washer and drying and thinking…it can't be that hard, can it?

In a more serious way, when we lose someone who used to live in the house, after the initial shock of the loss has worn off, I've spoken to many a widow or widower who never realized many of the things their spouse used to do.  From balancing the checkbook, to maintenance around the house, to buying groceries, to cutting the grass.  Now, left with that reality in front of them, they find themselves learning to do those jobs, sometimes the hard way, simply because they needed done.

Sometimes it can be tempting to just let the thing go.  Sometimes we do.  Still, I think for most of us there comes a moment when we realized.  "I guess if I don't do this… no one will, so whether I know how to or not, I'd better figure it out."

That had to have been something like what the disciples experienced today, as we celebrate the ascension.  These men had given up everything to follow Jesus.  For three years they followed him everywhere, even to his death on Calvary.  They thought they had lost him.  After mourning for two days, he rose from the dead and stood among them, resurrected.  They thought he would always be with them, just the way he was.  After all, what could possibly happen now, he had risen from the dead! 

So imagine their disappointment when Jesus tells them the news today.  Jesus was going to ascend to the father, and leave them on their own.  Of course, he left them well prepared, He would send the advocate, the Holy Spirit,  He had given them the Church, the body of Christ.  he had given them the Eucharist, where our Jesus would is truly present. 

But Jesus, their teacher, their Lord, was now gone, in the way he had always been.  Now, they were going to have to figure out how to live without being able to physically run up to ask him every time something went haywire.

For each of us, I'm sure we all remember that first time when we were on our own, really on our own.  When we have finally left the nest and had to make our own decisions.  Those times when we really couldn't just call home to ask mom and dad, when we just had to decide and stick by it.  That was exactly what the Apostles, and us as a Church were left with as we celebrate today.  Our Lord has gone on ahead of us to prepare a place for us.  He has opened up the gates of heaven for us.  Then, he has left us with what he has taught us.  In short, part of what we really celebrate today, is the faith of Jesus, the faith Jesus placed in us, his church, in his body in the world.    Once he rose to the father, then he sent the Holy Spirit to watch over us.  Really, this is the day when the Church was forced to grow up.  When the people of God were forced to go from children playing at home, and become adults who represent our God to the world.

 If we sit around and wait for something to happen, we'll be waiting all our lives.  Jesus had told the apostles "YOU will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."  Then, when Jesus acended on a cloud, the apostles just stood there, watching, dumbfounded, doing nothing until the two angels appeared to them and said "Men of Galilee, why are you just standing there looking up at the sky"  in short, they looked at them and said.  Jesus told you what to do…now get to work.  

We have to realize what the apostles realized.  So we're each left with a choice, every day.  As St. Theresa of Avila tells us, "Christ has no body now but yours." so when someone asks who Jesus is…they're looking to each of us, to see what he's like.  When someone wonders what a relationship with Jesus looks like….they look at you.  When someone wonders what a Catholic is like, they look at you.  That's the responsibility that Jesus leaves us with.

If you were the only Catholic that a person ever knew…if they based their entire vision of what Catholics are like on you.  What would they think Catholics are like?  Would they find a God worth believing in.  Would they see someone living out Jesus's call to the world?

Every day, if people know that you go to mass on Sunday, they know that "Catholics go to mass every Sunday, it's important to them."  If you treat every human being with dignity, they know that "Catholics treat people with dignity."  If you take time out to consciously pray, to break out that rosary, to make a habit of what we do, to develop a relationship with Jesus Christ.  You are showing the world who Catholics are.  If, on the other hand, we blow those things off, we make excuses, we show by our actions that those things aren't important.  You're saying to the world.  "I'm Catholic, I don't really value those things, so Catholics don't really value those things."

That doesn't mean we have to be perfect.  We're human…we sin all the time.  The question is, do I want to be better.  If the only message we ever managed to share was… I'm a mess, I sin all the time, but I keep turning to Jesus for help, I admit my sins, I go to confession and Jesus helps me try to do a little better."   Even if that's the only message we made clear with our lives…that would be an incredible testament to our faith in Jesus Christ, the power of forgiveness that he offers, and how he helps us through the daily struggles of everyday life.  That would be a powerful testimony.

Jesus places a tremendous responsibility on us, his Church today.  By ascending to the father, by not remaining to teach the world directly himself, he places his trust in each of us, as the Church to represent him to the world.  We have the Holy spirit to us to encourage us, to teach us, to inspire us, through the magisterium of the Church, just as we heard last week.  Yet, at the same time, the only Christ that many people in the world will ever see, is the one each of you choose to introduce them to.  Every one of us have that responsibility, every day of our lives.