A TIMELY GIFT

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THE GIFT OF THE ASCENSION

This year our Archbishop has transferred the celebration of the Ascension of the Lord from Thursday, May 21 to Sunday, May 24. The message of the feast, however, remains the same. The liturgy of the paschal season has been leading us toward this feast for weeks, and reflecting on the meaning of the mystery of the Ascension can be a help to all of us during these pandemic days.  

In  the naïve worldview of ancient Israel, where the earth was as flat as a dinner plate and the firmament was above and the netherworld below, the idea of Jesus’ “ascending” up into a cloud was easily accepted. Too easily, perhaps, because it would then seem to mean that Jesus, taken “up” into heaven, had gone away from us and was thus no longer present.

Fortunately our modern astronomy won’t allow us to settle for this simple picture of Jesus rising “upward” to heaven. And that’s great, because we’re not as likely to misinterpret it as meaning “Jesus left us.” We are forced to look for the meaning of the event rather than simply settling for “Jesus went up into the clouds of heaven.” And it is precisely this theological meaning that can be a comfort to us during these sad and uncertain times of pandemic.

The feast of the Ascension celebrates Jesus’ passing beyond the familiar dimensions of time and space, beyond the reach of our senses and into the presence of the Father. So what? Well, think about it: This means that Jesus is no longer bound by time and space, so he is now more present to us than he ever was previous to the Ascension. He is in our hearts and bodies, in our friends and our foes, in the spring breeze and, mysteriously, in the strands of DNA insde the novel coronavirus.

Now, we may be repelled by the idea that God could somehow be present in a terrible, deadly virus and all of the suffering it has caused, but that’s far more comforting than the alternate view – that God is totally absent from those tragic events and horrible microorganisms, and that we are left to face these horrors on our own. A God who’s only present to us when times are good is not much of a God.

So as we continue to struggle with the depressing statistics, the deaths of family members or friends, the dark uncertainties of unemployment and closed classrooms, let's remember the lesson of the Ascension: Christ is intimately present with each of us in the midst of this whole mess, and is walking every step with us through this valley of the shadow of death.

 "Though I walk in the valley of darkness

I fear no evil, for you are at my side. (Psalm 23:4)"