“AND A CLOUD TOOK HIM FROM THEIR SIGHT”

HOMILY FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD, YEAR A

Rev. Fr. Ezekoka Peter Onyekachi

Acts 1:1:11        Ephesians 1:17-23        Matthew 28:16-20

The Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord marks the end of His Resurrection appearances. In the New Testament, Jesus appeared at least ten times after His Resurrection before He ascended into heaven. Whereas the Resurrection expresses the reality both of Jesus’ triumph over death and also the continuation of the Immanent Lord as the Risen Lord, the Ascension underlines the divine aspect of Jesus’ destiny. After the nailing to the cross comes the hailing (in the sense of acclaiming) into glory. The reality of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven provides the key to understanding several aspects of the Faith. St. John Chrysostom commented that ‘in the Resurrection, the disciples saw the end but not the beginning, and in the Ascension, they saw the beginning but not the end’.

What is the Ascension? According to the Old Testament, to ascend into heaven would mean to go up into the humanly inaccessible home of the transcendent God (cf. Isaiah 66:1; Psalm 115:16). For human beings even to aspire to scale such heights would amount to extreme arrogance (cf. Gen. 11:4ff); although by God’s gift, some chosen ones like Enoch (cf. Gen. 5:24) and Elijah (cf. 2 Kings 2:11) were taken up in their bodily flesh into heaven. Our Lord’s Ascension involves the departure of the risen body of Christ to heaven, indicating some form of corporeal survival beyond physical death, His final glorification, and His departure from the material universe.

At the very opening of Acts, in his account of the Ascension (the First Reading; Acts 1:1-11), St. Luke the Evangelist expands upon his initial account of it in his Gospel (Luke; 24:50-53). In Acts, St. Luke retells the event in greater detail and clarifies any confusion he might have caused by placing the Ascension on the day of Resurrection at Bethany alongside another account in which the appearances went on for forty days before the Ascension; for forty days, He had continued to appear to them. In Acts, the Ascension happens in the context of a meeting of Jesus with His disciples, where He urges them to remain in Jerusalem until the arrival of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Courage, who will come to help them to witness to Him to the ends of the earth. In today’s Gospel, St. Matthew picks up the thread and runs with it: he speaks of a meeting on a Galilean mountain where our Lord, by His universal authority, commissions His disciples to go and make disciples of all nations.

Of what significance is the Ascension of our Lord to our faith? The Ascension of Christ is the consummation of the earthly mission of the Son of God in the flesh, and a prelude to the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, upon the disciples at Pentecost. The cloud that took him from their sight, the shekinah, alludes to the glorious coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven at the parousia; that is, His second coming. Think for a moment about the words of the two men in white to the disciples who were looking up into the sky: why are you standing here looking into the sky?… this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen Him go up. The Ascension prompts us always and everywhere to look up to Christ, to hold Him not only in profound admiration and respect, but also in discipline. In practice, only that which is worthy can be looked up to; and only He who is Ascended can put all things under His feet, in the words of St. Paul in Ephesians 1:22 (the Second Reading). ‘Having all things under his feet’ means that He is the ruler of everything, and the head of the Church. He is our Boss. This is why, like the disciples, we bow to Him in worship, and we look up to Him in prayer.

Finally, the words of the two men in white motivated Christ’s disciples to go down the mountain instead of standing there gawping at the sky, and to get all hands on deck to carry out the mission that Christ had entrusted to them. We too have got to get busy with the mission that Christ has entrusted to us! Jesus Christ is ascended, yes, alleluia! – and He has promised to remain with us to the end of time. The Ascension of our Lord reminds us to put our faith experience into practice, prioritising loving God and our neighbours as ourselves, working tirelessly to bring spiritual and material comfort to those in need, working diligently to deliver the Christian message coincident with the moral distribution of world resources, and determining to provide Christ’s peace and joy within our homes. For two millennia, frail human beings have marvelled at the mystery of the Ascension of the Lord. This is how we should let others marvel at how the Lord blesses our minuscule human efforts. For with them, faith is planted, peace is instilled, harmony is established, hope is sustained, equity is cultivated and love flourishes. May the Ascended Christ shower His blessings on us now and always. Amen. God bless you.