Mt 28:16-20
Dear Friends, In today’s feast of the Ascension, it is difficult for us to understand the enormity of the Apostles shock. We need a truly profound faith to grow into an honest awareness of the depth of the Apostles’ upheaval and turbulence at Jesus’s departure.
First of all, they are on their own. They had little organization and less clarity on their mission. No matter the beauty of Jesus’s comforting final words, their mentor, teacher, guide and support for three intense years was gone.
Try to imagine how alarming and distressful was the message of universality. The early Church would struggle with it for decades.
A significant part of Matthew’s Gospel was on the fulfillment of the Mosaic Law not the withdrawal from it. After a lifetime of experience and centuries of tradition, the concept of being “The Chosen People” was simply part of their Jewish DNA. Now, in a flash, they are missioned to turn everything around and upside down and inside out and preach the gospel to the heathen Gentiles.
Jesus made it clear, over and over again, his mission was to the family of Abraham. Now, in this final encounter, the mission is to “make disciples of all nations.” (Mt 28:19) It was going to take some time for the first disciples and the early Church to grasp the depth of Jesus’ call to universal inclusion. The consequent confusion is portrayed clearly in The Acts of the Apostles. To tell the truth, we have more than enough trouble accepting the stranger in our own parishes today.
Secondly, we read in the Gospel text: “when they saw him, they worshipped, but they doubted.” (Mt 28:17) While Matthew is much gentler than Mark, he too, portrays the original twelve as a flawed group of human beings. This text is an example of that. Right from the beginning, the Church was struggling with the clear limits of the human condition no matter how exalted the divine commission to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The affliction of human weakness is every bit as present in the Church and its members today.
Doubt and confusion have been part of the reality of the Church down through history. There has been little time in the history of the Church that some group has not been in the process of breaking away. Infidelity and conflict have been present from the earliest times of The Act of the Apostles to the crisis of the Latin Mass today. The abuse of youth in the sex scandal in our time is just part of a long history of sin and unfaithfulness. In the Church’s long journey of sin and grace, Jesus has kept his promise to be with us in the Church until the end.
A final observation is more comforting. In Mt 1:23 we read: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child and they shall name him Emmanuel which means “God is with us.” Now again we are given this divine assurance of Jesus: “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the ages.” (Mt 28:20)
While there has always been large numbers of problems, there always has been a more than substantial group of witnesses in the Church calling us in word and deed into the Gospel message.
Today, we also face our daily reality and have the call of Christ to live and preach the Gospel. There is no greater challenge in life if we truly respond with generosity. The obstacles are enormous. Seemingly countless of our children and friends and relatives have abandoned the Church. The young people of today seem much more inclined to find their spiritual way outside of organized religion. Our culture gets more materialistic by the hour and less inclined to take spirituality seriously. Along with these, and many other negative factors, we have the seemingly endless onslaught of the sexual abuse in the Church.
In it all, we need to cling to the promise of Emmanuel, God is with us.
The meaning of this beautiful feast of the Ascension is further captured in the words of today’s Preface of the Mass:
Christ, the mediator between God and men and women,
Judge of the world and 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 is gone, we hope to follow.
Our hope is rooted in the reality that Jesus is with us all of the time. Our fate is not hopelessness and confusion. It is a simple commitment to live with faith and trust in a God who has a better plan. We pray in the opening prayer of the Mass of the Ascension, “May we follow him into the new creation, for his Ascension is our glory and our hope.”
We will celebrate the other great gift of the Pascal Mystery, the Holy Spirit, in next week’s feast of Pentecost!
