MAY 12^th 2013. ASCENSION OF THE LORD

Gospel: Luke 24:46-53

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

GOSPEL                   Luke 24:46-53

 Jesus said to his disciples: 'You see how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to this.

 'And now I am sending down to you what the Father has promised. Stay in the city then, until you are clothed with the power from on high.' Then he took them out as far as the outskirts of Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. Now as he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven. They worshipped him and then went back to  Jerusalem full of joy; and they were continually in the Temple praising God.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

The Ascension of Jesus shows us that the ultimate destination for all of us is the Father. We are already on the way to the Father, whether we know it or not! This passage to the Father becomes evident in our lives whenever we become less oriented towards ourselves and more oriented to the things of God. To help us on the way to the Father, Jesus bequeaths us with a precious gift, a new garment that descends on us from high. This garment is the Holy Spirit. After the Fall, Adam and Eve dressed themselves with leaves, the things of the earth. We all cover ourselves with the things of the earth! We dress ourselves with our successes, the way we look, our talents, our public image. These are just ways to cover the vulnerability and poverty that all of us feel. When we are clothed with the Holy Spirit, by contrast, we are clothed with the knowledge that God loves us and that everything is taken care of by his wonderful providence. We feel at peace and fear nothing. But where do we receive this new garment? How do we become clothed with the Holy Spirit? The Gospel tells us that after the Ascension the disciples gathered continually to praise God. We must do the same. It is in the liturgical gatherings of the Church that we encounter God, listening to his word and receiving the power of Jesus through the sacraments. Gradually, step by step, slowly but surely, bit by bit, we are “clothed with power from on high”. Then we begin to live as children of God, leaving all things to his providence.

The Ascension shows us that our ultimate destination is the Father. We show in our daily lives that we are already on the way to the Father whenever we become less oriented to ourselves and more oriented to heavenly things.

This Sunday we contemplate and celebrate the Ascension of Our Lord. The destination of the risen Lord is heaven. The life of Jesus is a journey in which he descends to earth and then leads the way to heaven. His victory over death is not his stopping place. His true destination is his Father in heaven, and he reveals to us that our destiny is just the same - to go to the Father. Through his incarnation, passion, death, resurrection and ascension, we learn the marvellous news that our ultimate destination is not a place but a relationship. We can already experience this passage towards the Father in our daily lives. We feel the paschal transformation in our lives whenever we become less oriented towards ourselves and more oriented towards the Father. This happens often through our personal experience of the Cross, which can shake us, transform us, orient us, to the Father, through the grace of Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

This fact should lead us to contemplate heaven constantly and to evaluate the worth of things in the light of heaven. That which does not go to heaven has little value. The devil tempts us to worry about the future, but not about eternity. The future is doubtful, whereas eternity is something certain. Eternity is the love of the Father that has been prepared for us and which we can accept or decline in freedom. Oh, how our lives are preoccupied by trivial things that we believe represent our futures! Our ultimate future is heaven and this should dominate everything that we do.

We are destined to go to the Father. To get there we must be clothed with power from on high. To be clothed with power we must gather with the Christian community in the liturgy

Where is the road to heaven? What does it mean to live life as a journey towards the Father? In this Gospel, Jesus gives precise indications for doing just that. “Remain in the city then, until you are clothed with the power from on high”. The disciples have experienced the Risen Lord and are now given directions for what they are to do next. These directions also apply to us. The disciples were told to remain in the city. As the Church developed the holy city of Jerusalem (the nucleus of the early Church) came to be represented by the liturgical gathering, a place for encountering the Lord in community. The Lord manifests himself in the liturgy and Jesus asks that we “remain” in this gathering so that we can be “clothed with power from on high”. This refers to the evolution and growth that takes place within us as a result of what happens to us in the liturgical gathering. It is when we cultivate the time to contemplate God and receive the sacraments, when we gather and take on the attitude of praising the Lord, then, slowly but surely our “garment” changes. We become clothed with a garment that descends from above, the Holy Spirit.

We need to be clothed from above, but in reality we are clothed from below. We cover our insecurities and emptiness with the garment of success and public image

This notion of being re-clothed finds its origin in the third chapter of Genesis. After the Fall, humanity has a sense of nudity or poverty before God. To cover this nudity, we cover ourselves with a garment that comes from below, not from above. When Adam sins and breaks his relationship with God, he realizes that he is naked. In other words, he cannot come to terms with his own impoverishment. He has lost the paternal embrace of God and feels exposed and fragile. So what does he do? He takes the things of earth, the leaves from the trees, to cover himself. And even though he has covered himself, he still does not have the courage to confront the gaze of God. In the very same way we dress ourselves with the things of the earth, we dress ourselves with vainglory, we dress ourselves with our accomplishments, our successes, our projects. But no matter how much we try to dress ourselves up, we always feel exposed, naked like Adam, lacking authentic protection. The text in Genesis ends with God making garments for Adam and Eve from animal skins. This paternal act of clothing his children prefigures the act of Jesus at his Ascension. The Gospel tells us that Jesus blesses his disciples before ascending. The act of benediction in Scripture represents the moment when a father bequeaths his goods on to his children. At the moment that Isaac blesses Jacob, Jacob comes into his inheritance. In our Gospel reading, when Jesus blesses his disciples, at that moment they come to possess his inheritance, and this inheritance is the fact of being clothed from on high with the Holy Spirit.

To be dressed in the garment of the Holy Spirit is to be dressed in the garment of the providence of God. We no longer fear the future. We no longer feel vulnerable and exposed.

When humanity receives this new garment, it receives a new role in life. We pass from being creatures marked by sin and fear to being dignified children of God. The garment from on high is a sign of the love of the Father for us. What is a true Christian dressed in? The providence of God. The Gospel of Matthew tells us, “Do not worry about what to wear, or what to eat and drink. The pagans worry about these things. Your heavenly Father knows what you need, so seek the Kingdom of Heaven first, and all of these things will be added”. The heavenly garment, in other words, is the relationship with the Father. The garment is the inter-Trinitarian love of God, the Holy Spirit, that descends from above and, all at once, frees us from our nudity and fear.

We receive this new garment gradually, step by step, by participating wholeheartedly in the liturgy

Where is the place that this new garment descends on us from on high? Where do we receive the power of the Holy Spirit, who makes us new? The Gospel tells us that the disciples gathered together and continually praised God after the Ascension. By being present in the liturgy of the Church, we are gradually brought to the truth. The liturgy permits us to encounter God directly and, through the sacraments, the power of Jesus himself becomes present in our lives. It is through the liturgy that we are clothed with the power from on high that is described in this week’s Gospel. We are no longer clothed with our own works but with the work of God. It is one thing to try to confront reality with our own capacities, our own ways of doing things, our own ways of protecting ourselves. It is a different matter entirely to be vested with the knowledge that the Father loves us, protects us, guides us, does not abandon us, remains with us always. This garment helps me to face all things with incredible peace. The garment that we usually wear is that outward appearance that we show to the world, the role that we have in the world. But the new garment derives from our new role, which is to live a life in relationship with God, made possible by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. To be clothed with this new garment is to be already given over to Christ, to be his property. We must remain in the “holy city”, i.e., participate wholeheartedly in the liturgy until we are, slowly but surely, clothed with this new garment.