Looking Up

Looking Up
Homily for Sunday, May 17, 2015
Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord - B
by Dcn Bob Bonomi

Ever try standing on the street or in a public place and just stare up into the sky or at the ceiling while people walked by? Maybe shade your eyes with your hands to emphasize that you are looking real hard? Sooner or later you’ll get others to stop and look up, trying to see what it is that you find so interesting. (As kids, that’s when we’d laugh and say, “Ha, ha – made you look.”)

In fact, I bet that, if I just stopped right now and stared hard at the ceiling, or maybe our beautiful rose window in the back, and said nothing but continued to stare, some of you would get the irresistible urge to look.

Why do we do that? We can’t help it - we are curious creatures, we creations of God. We are just dying to see what others see – we don’t want to be left out. In fact, we can get so caught up in trying to see something that we can miss what’s going on around us. (Think about rubber-neckers passing by an accident scene.)

That’s the image I get of the Ascension from our first reading from Acts – all of the disciples are standing around, staring at the sky, and they don’t even notice when two men dressed in white come up to them. “Uh, whatcha staring at? There’s nothing there anymore.”

But have you noticed that although the Church emphasizes the Ascension of our Lord, the Gospels themselves say very little about the event itself. Take today’s Gospel passage. In it, St. Mark mentions the Ascension almost as an afterthought: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.” St. John’s Gospel doesn’t even include the Ascension directly, although he refers to it in depth: first in his Bread of Life discourse, when he tells his disciples that if they have trouble accepting that one has to eat of the flesh of the Son of Man for eternal life, then how will they react if they were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?; and then later during his Last Supper Discourse as he talks about having to leave them in order to send the Advocate to be with them. And although we get the most detail about the Ascension from St. Luke’s description in today’s passage from the Acts of the Apostles, in St. Luke’s Gospel account it sounds as if Jesus ascended shortly after his Resurrection. And St. Matthew doesn’t even mention it!

So why don’t we hear more about the Ascension in the Gospels? Because the Early Church didn’t need it – they already knew it; it was part of the fundamental catechesis to those being introduced to Jesus; it was already part of their beliefs; and it was never in question. We see that in St. Paul’s letters, like the one from Ephesians that we just heard: “The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.” It was and still is integral to our profession of faith, “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father”. It is and has always been core to our beliefs.

But the Ascension is more than just an event where Jesus sails away from us into the clouds. The Ascension is a turning point for our lives today, just as it was for Jesus’ disciples 2000 years ago. It was the signal to prepare for action. For three years prior to His death and Resurrection, Jesus did the heavy lifting of proclaiming the Good News; with the Ascension it became time for his disciples to take over. In today’s readings we just heard St. Mark say that the disciples went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them; St. Paul talked about the different roles that were assigned to the disciples by the Lord; and St. Luke told them that they would be witnesses to the ends of the earth. Marching orders for His disciples.

That’s US. WE'RE His disciples today. It is up to us, as the master composer Puccini was supposed to have said to his students as he was dying, to “complete the opera” that he was working on. We must pick up where Jesus left off, for it is in us and through us that Jesus continues to live.

Now, next week we will celebrate Pentecost – the coming of the Holy Spirit. We each have received the Holy Spirit through our baptisms and in Confirmation, and the Holy Spirit continues to work through us. We will be reminded of that next week, as will those who in the various parishes around the world receive the sacrament of Confirmation, like many of our youth did just a couple of weeks ago. We have received our marching orders, now we must act.

One final thought. When Jesus “left” the disciples the first time at his crucifixion, they were afraid and sad, uncertain about their future. But with the Resurrection, they saw that they did not need to fear death, and so when Jesus “left” the second time through his Ascension, they were no longer afraid or sad, but joyous and celebratory, even though they had not received the Holy Spirit at that point, and wouldn’t until Pentecost. The difference? They knew the love of Jesus and it was through that love that their joy was complete. They were ready for the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit then gave them the tools, the skills, the graces they needed to evangelize.

So between now and next Sunday, I encourage you to pray for the Holy Spirit and the gifts and graces that the Spirit, dwelling in you, has given to you and to work through you, drawing others to God.

And remember: The secret of evangelization isn’t to tell others that they need to change; it is in just getting them to look up.