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Mass Readings
First Reading: Acts 1:1-11
Psalm: Psalm 47:2-3, 6-9
Second Reading: Ephesians 1:17-23 OR Hebrew 9:24-28; 10:19-23
Gospel: Luke 24:46-53
Today we celebrate Ascension Sunday. What is the Ascension? I suggest to you that today is one of the most poorly celebrated of the great liturgical days in the liturgical calendar. We’ve turned today into a sort of “bon voyage” party, as if we’re seeing Jesus off on his return trip home. This is not a particularly helpful image.
To better understand the Ascension, we need to go back to the beginning, but first I want to say that I’m pulling a lot from the theologian, Michael Himes, and his excellent book, the Mystery of Faith.<1>
In Genesis, Chapter 1, God creates everything. But as he’s going along, it’s all fairly quick and straightforward. God says, “Let there be…”, and it just becomes and it is good (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24).
But on the sixth day, instead of just snapping humans into existences like a superhero, God pauses. God deliberates. God plans. God decides to use a blueprint to create humans – the blueprint being God’s own self. This is an important theme in the Hebrew tradition. Mosaic law will forbid making any idols or images of God (Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8). Why? Because its redundant. God had already made an image of Himself, and we are it.
Remember what we’ve discussed before on Origin Sin. The temptation is that Adam and Eve should eat the forbidden fruit, they will become like God. That serpent tells the first humans that God is great and powerful and majestic and wise. But humans, life as a human is so messy. To become God, he tells them, they need to abandon being human and to eat the fruit of the tree.
The origin of sin, according to the Hebrew tradition, is the rejection of the goodness of being human. Evil, then, is the refusal to accept the goodness of creation. It is the refusal to accept the goodness and rightness of being human. The acceptance of the serpent says instead of what God says is what leads to all the evil in history.
But there is hope.
Our hope is in the “mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now [as the prophets wrote] disclosed,” (Romans 16:25-26). The extraordinary claim of the hymn quoted in Philippians 2 is that God did not see being divine was something to be clung to, so He emptied Himself and took the form of slave, becoming like you and me in every way except sin.
This great mystery hidden for all generations and revealed in the Incarnation is God’s desire to be exactly like you and exactly me in every way except sin. This is the ultimate statement of being human. This is what human dignity is all about. Our understanding of human dignity flows from the teaching of the Incarnation and is at the heart of the Christian tradition.
If Original Sin is the rejection of the goodness of being human, then the Incarnation is the revelation of that goodness. When we read in the New Testament that Jesus has become like us in all things except sin (Hebrews 4:15), we are taught that our humanity unites us with the fullness of God’s glory.
Now, let’s consider the Ascension. The point of the Ascension is not the Jesus returns to the Father. The point of the Ascension, in the imagery of the Creed that we recite in the mass every weekend, is that what sits at the right hand of the Father is a human being just like you and just like me in every way except sin. What unites us with the fullness of the glory of the Father is our humanity. Being fully and authentically human means that you and I become more fully and truly like God, or to use another word, it means to become holy. Any form of spirituality that belittles humanity or de-emphasizes the goodness and dignity of the human person is a genuine obstacle to union with God.
Jesus gave us one commandment. To love God completely and to love our neighbor as ourselves is the same thing – it’s two sides of the same coin. The Vatican II document Lumen Gentium affirms this understanding that intimate union with God and the unity of all humanity are the same thing, (LG 1,1). That’s the point that we need to understand on Ascension Sunday.
Two quotes to ponder as we wrap up this reflection on the Ascension. The first is from John Paul II who wrote in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, that Christianity is an attitude of “deep amazement at the human person’s worth and dignity.”<2> Saint Irenaeus, a second-century father of the church, wrote, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.” And we’ll close with the image that what sits at the right hand of the Father is a human being just like you and just like me in every way except sin.
Homework!
- If the glory of God is a human fully alive, when are you fully alive?
- How does our true belief in the awesome dignity of humanity change the way we see the world?
- How can the dignity of the human person change the world?
Got it? Get it? Good! May Almighty God bless you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. +Amen!
Notes:
<1> Himes, Michael, The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to Catholicism (Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2004), 303-413.
<2> John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1979), #10, 28.