Sunday May 29, 2022.
Reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke Lk 24, 46-53
At that time, Jesus appeared to his disciples and said: “It is written that the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that his name must be preached to all nations, beginning for Jerusalem, the need to turn to God for the forgiveness of sins. You are witnesses of this. Now I am going to send you the one my Father promised you. So stay in the city until you receive strength from on high.”
Then he went out with them out of the city, to a place near Bethany; raising his hands, he blessed them, and as he blessed them, she departed from them and rose to heaven. They, after worshiping him, returned to Jerusalem, full of joy, and remained constantly in the temple, praising God. Lord’s word.
Have we realized that with the Ascension of Jesus, we are celebrating his physical absence from our world? Going up to heaven, Jesus finished his time on earth after being born and growing up as a man, after living with men and preaching the kingdom of God, after dying for all men, and letting himself be seen by some chosen by Him. Jesus separated from them. Leaving them alone in the world, we should be somewhat surprised that we Christians consider the day on which Christ parted from his disciples to be a great feast, depriving them of his company, of his consolation.
What is happy about a day where the Christian community lost sight of what it had best, and was left without what it needed most: Christ Jesus? Or, isn’t it true that what we know most about Christ, his disciples, is to miss him? Is it not true that what we Christians perceive best in our world is the absence of Jesus? We complain, and not without reason, about how abandoned we are by God, about how little interest he shows in our things and in this world of ours…
Feeling the absence of God, that our world suffers from his real disappearance, shouldn’t leave us sad? Quite the opposite! The disciples who saw Jesus disappear in the sky, returned to Jerusalem with great joy… Jesus who said goodbye to his own blessing them, left them blessing God, opening new joy and prayer; and it is that, it is characteristic of the Christian life, to know God away from our land without knowing ourselves abandoned by him. Since the beginning of the Church, the disciples of Jesus have known that they are alone in this world, without having to lament having been abandoned because, in truth, we Christians do not have God on Earth, we do not have him within reach of our hands, but we can reach it in the heart.
Returning to God, Jesus has not left us orphans, he has left us busy with the task of representing him to the world, a world that suffers even if it does not confess it because of his absence: you are my witnesses, he said to his disciples. Jesus, before leaving the earth. Having our interests well covered before God, that he takes care of them, Jesus has entrusted us to take care of God’s interests in the world.
The Christian, far from lamenting the absence of God, which is not definitive, lives in the midst of the world representing the rights of God; as long as God does not make himself present again, as long as his will and his kingdom are not a reality among us, and in ourselves, we will have the obligation to present ourselves before the world as God’s lieutenants: men and women who live to remember that the distance from God it is only apparent, while our world is missing, God needs believers who make him present by living according to his will and bearing witness to his demands. Indeed, Jesus left us a difficult mission, but also the strength of his Spirit, the joy of living and a life occupied in prayer and witness that he went to set aside a place for us in heaven, before God.
Enjoy the presence of God in the mass and in the family!
#Ascension #Lord #cycle