Jesus’ Ascendant Blessing, Solemnity of the Ascension, May 9, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
May 9, 2024
Acts 1:1-11, Ps 47, Eph 1:17-23, Mk 16:15-20

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The text that guided the homily was: 

• Today on the Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension into heaven, we can look at the three principal things that the Church normally marks on this feast, the three chief aspects of this mystery we ponder when we meditate on the second glorious mystery of the Rosary: the reality of heaven and Christ’s ascent there; his great commission to the apostles and the Church to continue his work; and the parting gift, the perpetual blessing he gives us to help us complete that mission and one day join him in heaven with many others, the Holy Spirit.
• The first reality we celebrate today is heaven. Today we celebrate the day Jesus returned home, to the place from which he came to earth to save us. He returned differently than he left, taking our human nature with him across the threshold of death into life. 43 days before his Ascension, during the Last Supper, Jesus told his closest followers about this connection between his ascension and our resurrection and assumption. He said, “I am going to the Father, … the one who sent me” (Jn 14:17, 16:5). But he also said, “You have faith in God, have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” Heaven is the place where Christ has prepared for us so that we might rejoice with him forever. “He mounts his throne to shouts of joy” and he wants us to be able to experience one day with him that joy.
• Jesus often spoke about the great joyof heaven. He took his contemporaries’ most popular celebration — an eight-day sumptuous wedding banquet — and used it time and again to describe the unending joy of the eternal wedding banquet (Mt 22, Mt 25, Lk 12, Rev 19, Rev 21). St. Paul and Isaiah affirm that “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor the human heart conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9; Is 64:4). This is what St. Paul prayed that the Ephesians realize in today’s second reading, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” Heaven is our hope. Heaven is our glorious inheritance. But it’s a hope and an inheritance to which we’re “called.” To obtain it, we have to respond to that call, by following Christ the Lord all the way, through a life of faith in him, in imitation of the love with which he loved us.
• And that begins with our desire. Our focus on Jesus’ Ascension, not just today but every few days when we pray the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, is meant to stoke our desire. We heard St. Paul tell us on Easter Sunday: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col 3:1-2). We are called to seek the things that are above, to hunger for heaven, for God, for eternity. The Solemnity of the Ascension is meant to stoke our desire for Christ’s face, to see him with the eyes of our heart enlightened. We prayed in the opening prayer today that Christ’s Ascension may give us hope to follow him all the way: “For the Ascension of Christ your Son is our exaltation, and, where the Head has gone before us in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope.” And we know that in heaven, Jesus is not just awaiting us. He’s interceding for us. God the Father, as St. Paul tells us in the second reading, “rais[ed] him from the dead and seat[ed] him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion” and “put all things beneath his feet.” He’s praying for us so that we may know “the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.”
• The second reality we mark today is the mission Jesus gives us as he ascends: to be witnesses to him, to his message, to his work. He has all power in heaven, as we see in the Ephesians, but in gives that power to us in the Church to fulfill his mission. He tells us in St. Matthew’s version of Jesus’ last words, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” In St. Mark’s today, he tells us, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature,” and he gives the Church his authority to drive out demons, speak new languages, heal the sick and overpower serpents and toxins. Jesus loved us enough, and he trusted us so much, that he placed his own mission and authority into our hands. And he wants us to go out to help others become his followers, to be set free by his truth, to live in his presence in this world so that we may live with him ascended forever. As I like to say, Jesus could have stayed on earth until the end of time saving everyone himself, one-by-one, so that our frailties wouldn’t get in the way of this most important mission of all time. Instead, he ascended, taking the training wheels off of our discipleship, removing from us any excuse to pass the buck. He wants us to help draw others to the throne of grace in this world and forever. That’s the great commission. But he hasn’t left us on our own. St. Luke tells us in his version of the Ascension that Jesus “led them out as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. As he was blessing them,he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.” Jesus departed as he was blessing us. Pope Benedict commented once that the Risen Jesus is blessing us perpetually in heaven: “Jesus departs in the act of blessing. He goes while blessing, and he remains in that gesture of blessing. His hands remain, stretched out over this world. … The gesture of hands outstretched in blessing expresses Jesus’ continuing relationship to his disciples, to the world. In departing, he comes to us, in order to raise us up above ourselves and to open up the world to God. That is why the disciples could return home from Bethany rejoicing. In faith we know that Jesus holds his hands stretched out in blessing over us. That is the lasting motive of Christian joy.” Jesus is continually blessing us. He is blessing us when we wake up in the morning. He’s blessing us as we do our studies and work, write papers or take exams. He’s blessing us in our homes and in family and communal life. He’s blessing us when we eat. He’s blessing us in hard times. He’s blessing us right now. He’s blessing us always. And through his hands raised in blessing, he’s seeking to transforms us into his enfleshed benediction of the world.
• The third reality we mark is the help he gives us to complete that mission. He sends us the Holy Spirit. In the valedictory address St. Luke records in the Acts of the Apostles, today’s first reading, Jesus says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” And that’s the power that came down upon them on Pentecost, what St. Paul in today’s second reading called the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him.”  During the Last Supper, Jesus had said something startling, which we pondered two days ago at daily Mass: “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (Jn 16:7). He was describing the incredible gift of the Holy Spirit’s presence as something even greater than his own presence. Today as we begin the decenarium or ten days of prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we huddle around Mary like the apostles praying for greater docility and openness to the Holy Spirit’s fire.
• Jesus’ act of continual blessing happens here at Mass, as he continues to speak to us and more importantly continues to be with us blessing us from the inside with his own life, allowing us to receive his risen and ascended Body and Blood, which is our participation here on earth in his ascension even now. Jesus pointed to the Ascension when he was describing his continued presence in the Eucharist until the end of time. When his disciples were mumbling in Capernaum about how he could give us his flesh to eat and blood to drink, he said, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending to where he was before?” Living a truly Eucharistic life, entering into Jesus’ consecration in the Mass, is the path of our Ascension. “Amen, amen I say to you,” Jesus told us, “he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him on the last day,” because “he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.… He who eats me will live because of me.” Eternal life is knowing Christ Jesus, and we know him in a Biblical way through the consummation of the one-flesh spousal union between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride the Church here at Mass, effected by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is also the means in which we stoke our desire to see the High Priest who reigns in heaven and bids us approach the throne of grace to receive mercy. This is the means by which, united with Christ, we are sent out by him with his blessing at the end of the liturgy, to “go and announce the Gospel of the Lord!,” with the power of the Holy Spirit, that the world so much needs. God has indeed mounted his throne to shouts of joy and wants to transform us by his blessing and the power of the Holy Spirit to become a “blare of trumpets for the Lord!” helping others, with us, to seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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