Homily for Solemnity of the Ascension

Homily for the Solemnity
of the Ascension

June 1, 2003
Collect
Resurrection, Riverview, Fla.
Most Holy Redeemer, Tampa           

In most of the U.S.--indeed, in most of the Catholic world--the solemnity of the Ascension is observed on the 7th Sunday of the Easter season (May 16, this year).  But in some places in the U.S. and elsewhere, it remains on its traditional Thursday of Easter's 6th week.  Here's an old homily to mark that festivity (on which I won't be preaching this year).

“May we follow your Son Jesus Christ into the new creation, for his ascension is our glory and our hope” (Collect).

(source unknown)

The opening prayer of the Mass always combines praise of God the Father with petition.  So this morning we acknowledge the Father’s saving power:  Christ’s ascension is our glory and our hope.  And we pray that we may follow Christ into the new creation.

According to one version of the origin of Satan and his demonic cohorts—the fall of Lucifer from angel of light to prince of darkness—God put all the angels to a test.  This isn’t in the Bible; it’s just theological speculation and carries no doctrinal weight.  The divine test was to reveal to them that God was going to create lesser creatures, but the angels would one day have to pay homage and be obedient to one of these creatures, a human being.  At such a scandalous idea, Lucifer and his allies revolted against God and the divine plan, and so they abandoned heaven and created hell.  And thenceforth they made perpetual war on both God and men.

Such is one theory of the origin of the devils.  That theory highlights one of the meanings of today’s feast:  Jesus Christ’s ascension is our glory and our hope.  The Son of God, the 2d Person of the Holy Trinity, was always in heaven.  Who ascended from earth to heaven was Jesus of Nazareth, the human being born of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, God’s Son but the Son of Man as well.  The angels of heaven are obedient to Jesus Christ, God and man; “all things are beneath his feet,” St. Paul says (Eph 1:22).  The devils of hell he has conquered.

When Americans accomplish great deeds—at the Olympic Games, for instance—or when an American is honored by canonization as a saint, we’re all proud and bask in their glory.  When the Salesian bishop of Dili, East Timor, Carlos Felipe Belo, won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1996, his 17,000 Salesian brothers felt the same pride and joy.  And today we boast that Jesus has raised our human nature to divine glory, giving all of us hope of joining him.  Where one human being has gone, pioneering the way, so to speak, the rest of us may follow.  So today we celebrate the exaltation, the heavenly enthronement, of one of our own.  “God mounts his throne amid shouts of joy,” Ps 47 says (v. 6), but in Christ the divine is now inseparable from the human nature the Son took on by his incarnation.  The whole of humanity has been exalted by the triumph of Jesus Christ.  Our destiny has been changed, our hope has been raised, from the inevitable corruption and disintegration of the grave to the integrity and the glory and the joy of eternal life with God our Father.  The preface of the Mass for today says that Christ our Lord “was taken up to heaven…to claim for us a share in his divine life.”

So our prayer this morning was that we might follow our Lord Jesus into the new creation.  “New creation” is a New Testament concept for eternal life in Christ.  In Romans St. Paul writes that “creation itself would be set free from corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (8:21).  In the original creation described in the 1st chapters of Genesis, the 1st man and woman enjoyed immortality and walked in intimate friendship with God.  There was neither pain nor sorrow on the earth.  All those bless-ings they lost when they sinned, rebelling like Satan against the divine plan.

But our redemption by Christ reversed our condemnation and the whole creation’s:  “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation:  the old has passed away; behold, the new has come,” Paul writes to the Corinthians (II, 5:17).  St. Peter affirms that “we await a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (II, 3:13).  In his risen body, Jesus of Nazareth is already part of that wondrous new creation—as also is his holy Mother, whom he raised from the tomb and assumed into heaven to be with him, as we also shall be at the end of time.  If we follow Christ in this life, we’ll join him in eternal life and be made new, whole, young, strong, joyful, and glorious like him.  Our prayer today is that we may indeed follow him.