The Ascension brings words of images, images of celebration.
We raise our heads, we look at the sky, we always wait for a promise. “The Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” What was this experience of the apostles made of? What was the part of the senses, what was that of the mind? I do not know. Let us simply recognize the humble necessity of images. Ascension is the removal from one place to another, it is the invitation to the great shift from vision to faith, from what is understood to what is believed. In order to see more clearly, in order to believe more intelligently, we must descend, descend in order to better ascend.
The story of the Ascension presents a double departure. That of Jesus, effective departure, definitive departure. Forty days after Easter, Christ is no longer visible to the fleshly eyes of his disciples. The other departure is that of the apostles: “As for them, they went and proclaimed the Gospel everywhere.” Are these two departures hasty? We would be tempted to believe it. It is, apparently, on an obvious insecurity, on an unresolved disbelief, on an ill-founded understanding of what is happening, that Jesus leaves his disciples and launches them into the adventure of the mission. Wouldn’t it have been more judicious to stay with them for a while longer, to train them further, to prepare them for the persecutions to come? What then is this logic which makes Jesus pronounce the dispersion of the apostles at the moment when their faith in His resurrection is just being born? Can you mishandle a newborn? But Jesus doesn’t think like that.
Calculated risk, or brilliant improvisation? The question is not confined to these terms. These are too much a matter of planning logic, which would take into account the percentages of insurance and risks, success and failure, assets and bad luck.
Have we ourselves tried to plan our lives in this way? No. We relied, as we are relying on this morning, on the dynamic of a promise. On faith in a new life, over which death has no influence. On a Spirit who must come. The anchor point, for us as for the apostles, is forward, not backward. The signs spring up in front, not behind. This is the adventure of faith. This was our choice.
So why must the evangelical impulse so often remain held back by the fragile security of the past and the moment? It is perhaps that, too naturally, the Christian is too cautious, with a prudence that too quickly combines Christianity with the logic of the world. We would like to guarantee the harvests before risking the sowing. Does this wisdom of prerequisites, which requires that everything be carefully finalized before taking on the challenge of faith, relate to an evangelical principle? We can really ask ourselves that. If we wait for the perfection of rites and language, or our own and that of our brothers, to get started, when will we be ready? Our weak commitment is burying the world. So, is it possible to shake this habit of evangelizing where we are almost more in a hurry, as Pope Francis writes in his first exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”, to consider the process rather than the walk itself?
Jesus gone, he returns to us; it is up to us to go into the whole world, it is up to us to be Christ, at home and for others. “Proclaim the Gospel everywhere”: we cannot say more clearly the universal mission of the Church.
We sometimes translate: the Gospel should cover the face of the earth. Evangelization would proceed by extension of a clerical fabric. We should spread the Gospel like we spread information. But Jesus leaves his disciples on earth and on earth, with the mission of making it happen to God, as the completion of His own Passover.
As Bishop Lovey reminds us in his Easter message, if Jesus “passed by doing good”, it is now up to us to do good to bring this world into God, and God into this world. Through Ascension, we are sent back to earth, to the world, we are invited to first place our feet on our ground, as we like to do on our mountain paths. Quite the opposite of an escape from our lives, Ascension is a lesson in realism. We are once again invited not to park in the sky of our dreams. Earth and sky are distinguished as on the first day of creation, and it is the earth which is once again assigned to us, given, not abandoned.
Certain paintings of the Ascension show the trace of Jesus’ feet as the only “hollow” relic of His departure, an apparent redoublement of His absence like the empty tomb of Easter morning, but a sign of our vocation at the same time as of His new presence. It is up to us today to inform this earth of a Word, which here is more than communicating information to it, but infusing it with a new language, penetrating it with leaven, giving it new hope, so that it can take shape , and raises the Kingdom of God in the middle of the world. Then Ascension will find its true meaning.
Amen.
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