Sunday Gospel Comment
Alberic Jacovone OSB
YEAR ASCENSION OF THE LORD - 8.5.05 Acts 1,1-11; Eph 1,17-23; Mt 28,16-20 I am with you!... Where, Lord? A
place in God’s glory.
Every Sunday, we & millions of Catholics pray the Creed at Mass. In it we
proclaim: ‘he ascended into heaven & sits at God’s right hand’. Today,
celebrating Ascension-Day, we have the perfect occasion to appreciate the
meaning of the words we pray in the Creed. So, we ask: what’s in it for us
that Our Lord ascended - went to his place of glory - sits at God’s right
hand? Answer: he’s gone ahead to prepare a place for us. One day, he will take
us there & with him we will be in God’s glory, we will be part of the
Communion of Saints in God’s eternal home. Now, through faith, we are part of
the ‘mystical’ Body of Christ, so we are sure that we will also be part of
Christ’s glory in heaven: where Christ-Our-Head has gone, there we will also
be -as members of his Body- . The ‘Preface’ of Ascension Day presents this
truth beautifully: ‘Today, the Lord Jesus, King of glory, conqueror of sin
& death, ascended to heaven while the angels sang his praises. Christ the
mediator between God & man - judge of the world & Lord of all - has
passed beyond our sight, not to abandon us but to be our hope. Christ is the
beginning, the head of the Church. Where he has gone, we hope to follow’. Of course it is fair to ask -ever so reverently- how is this going to
come about? and how is it going to influence our life here in this present time?
We must go beyond our physical understanding of the world; beyond our poor human
language, with its poor human images of place & sitting & right hand
etc... The realm of God and of the Risen Lord is beyond our human reality. The
Bible talks about the ‘cloud’ as the place where God’s presence is
concealed and revealed; but it’s all poor, imperfect human imagery. Eucharistic
overtones: We
believe that at his Ascension, our Lord has passed beyond our sight & our
physical world, not to abandon us but to be our hope. We know that our Risen
Lord, is & will be with us always until the end of time. In today’s
Gospel, we hear Jesus departing words: ‘I am with you always’ (Mt 28 20).
And the late Pope John Paul II comments on these words, in his letter for the
year of the Eucharist: Mane nobiscum Domine, stay with us Lord. He says (in n.
16) about ‘The Mystery of Real Presence: With the entire tradition of the Church we believe that Jesus is truly
present under the Eucharistic Species. This presence -as Pope Paul VI rightly
explained- is called ‘real’ not
in an exclusive way, as if to suggest that other forms of Christ’s presence
are not real, but par excellence, because Christ thereby becomes
substantially present, whole and entire, in the reality of his body & blood
(Here he quoted 2 documents of the Church). Faith demands that we approach the
Eucharist fully aware that we are approaching Christ himself. It is precisely
his presence which gives the other aspects of the Eucharist - as meal, as
memorial of the Paschal Mystery and as eschatological anticipation- a
significance which goes far beyond mere symbolism. The Eucharist is a mystery of
presence, the perfect fulfilment of Jesus’ promise, to remain with us until
the end of the world’. With this in mind, Pope John Paul II exhorts us all to
honour the ‘real’ presence of our
Lord among us ‘ celebrating, worshipping, contemplating, creating a lively
awareness of Christ’s real presence, Receiving Our Lord in Communion, spending
time in Eucharistic adoration outside Mass, contemplating the face of Christ at
the school of Mary. This Year, we still have time to make the Eucharist the
centre of our Christian life ______________________________________ |
