Sunday Gospel Comment

 

Alberic Jacovone OSB

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YEAR A

Acts 1,1-11; Eph 1,17-23; Mt 28,16-20

It’s not a pie in the sky! 

‘He ascended into Heaven’: Every Sunday -at Mass-, millions of Christians recite these words in the Apostles’ Creed, without reflecting that ‘Ascension’-as a concept- can raise challenging questions. If the Lord did not go -as it were in a lift- to a floor upstairs, how did the event happen? in what circumstances? and how does it touch our life? Today, as we meditate on Our Lord’s Ascension, it’s essential that we go beyond the outdated pre-Copernican view of the world (Cosmology), where heaven is above, hell is below and we are in the middle. Our Risen Lord has gone beyond our human reality - and into God’s realm. The language Luke uses in his Gospel is: ‘He withdrew from them & was taken up into heaven’ (4,51); & in Acts (1,9) he says: ‘he was lifted up & a cloud took him out of their sight’. Luke uses the symbol of a cloud to describe God’s presence, as if to say that Jesus withdrew & vanished into a mysterious ‘Cloud’, in which God’s presence is concealed and revealed. This presence is totally beyond our physical experience, and can never be fathomed or manipulated or shaped by our human ingenuity. The concept of Resurrection, Ascension & Exaltation is a poor human way to describe how much the ‘Son of God’ has done & does for us: He loves us - provides for us - reassures us - and even pleads that it is better for us that he goes - ahead of us- to prepare a place for us. And yet all along, the abiding presence of our Lord is stressed: our Lord assures us that the Holy Spirit will be with us, and in fact, He Himself will be with us always, until the end of time. In trying to comprehend this absence and abiding presence of our Risen Christ, we are warned to avoid using images that may be too human, since everything about God is beyond human imagery.

The "Cloud" in the Bible: Both, Old & New Testaments are ever so careful, when attempting to describe God’s glory or presence. The Gospels do convey to us the conviction that the Resurrection & Ascension was for real & was indeed accomplished in the body of Jesus. At the same time, his body was glorified. Jesus Christ is Risen Lord and as such He was able to go in and out of rooms while the doors were closed; and when Jesus ascended, he was taken into, -indeed He vanished into- God’s ‘Cloud’, which hides His mysterious presence from our physical sight. The Book of Exodus talks about a "pillar of cloud": When the people of Israel left Egypt and marched -through the desert- to Mount Sinai, God’s divine presence went before them in ‘a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night’ (13,21). From the "Cloud", God guided, provided & protected them. The idea of "Cloud" both reveals and conceals the divine presence: it reveals truth, & at the same time limits revelation. On the other hand, fire symbolized the "power" with which God was leading them. This "Fire" has its parallel in the coming of the Spirit under the symbol of "tongues of fire", on Pentecost Sunday. The meaning of the Ascension therefore, can be summed up in this way. In in our day to day experience we constantly lose sight of the loving designs that "God - in Christ - through the Holy Spirit- has for us all; we need to value how God’s presence & absence operate. When it feels as if the Lord has abandoned us, when we face hurts, disappointments and even tragedies, our Lord reassures us & His Spirit strengthens us: He continues to be with us - guide us - camp in the open with us. With Him - all together - we are companions in the journey.

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