Ascension - Homily 6

Homily 6 - 2020

St Luke, I think, was the only New Testament author who wrote explicitly about Jesus’ Ascension. But he was a powerful story-teller, so his insight into the mystery of what happened to the risen Jesus is the one with which we are most familiar. The important thing about the Risen Jesus is what was mentioned in today’s Second Reading — that he now “sits at God’s right hand”. We recite the Creed: “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty”. To sit at the right hand of another meant, in the imagery of the time, to share in the power of the other. So the risen Jesus came to share the same power as God.

But wasn’t Jesus already God? Yes! So ... did not the historical Jesus share the power of God? The answer is, perhaps surprisingly: No! St Paul made the point quite clearly in his Letter to the Philippians. “His state [referring to the Christ, the Word of God] was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself … and became as men are” — that is, he became human in Jesus. The historical human Jesus became “like us in all things but sin”; he “was tempted as we are”, etc. In other words, the Word of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, chose to become human. Divinity was humanised. But, with the resurrection, the human, historical Jesus became divine through the Father who raised him out of death. His humanity was divinised — and with him, all humanity, us. In one of the Epistles of Peter, we are referred to “sharers in the divine nature”, no less!

Pope Benedict, preaching his first Easter homily as Pope back in 2007, said this, “Christ’s Resurrection … if we may borrow the language of the theory of evolution, is the greatest "mutation", absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development: a leap into a completely new order which does concern us, and concerns the whole of history…”. Just a little further on in the same homily, he repeated, “[The Resurrection] is a qualitative leap in the history of "evolution" and of life in general towards a new future life, towards a new world which, starting from Christ, transforms this world of ours, and draws it to itself”.

As we continue to reel from the Covid-19 pandemic, we hear voices crying out to get back as quickly as possible to “business as usual”. Others are more circumspect and counsel us to review, to take on board any lessons to be learnt from our experience of partial lockdown, and to be open to change and improvement.

Pope Francis would align himself generally with the second group. But rather than move immediately to practical solutions, he calls for something more radical -- that we examine our attitudes to each other and to our world with its urgent ecological and environmental needs. He reminds us that the ones who have suffered most, whether at the local or the global levels, have been the poorest and the most marginalised.

He invites everyone, but particularly us disciples of Jesus, to adopt what he calls a contemplative approach — to see people and our world in the light of our dignity as creatures, dearly loved by our creating and gracious God and redeemed by the crucified Jesus. He suggests that we love each other and our world. He views the appearance and the ravages of the Covid-19 virus as unsurprising, given our generally cavalier attitudes in the past to the dignity of others and to our responsibility towards our material world with which we are intrinsically connected and on which we inexorably depend.

Who would have thought that the Feast of the Ascension would lead us to such pressingly urgent reflection!