Today we are celebrating Ascension Thursday. For those who do not know, Catholics throughout most of the world, including many Catholics in the United States, observed the Lord’s Ascension last Thursday. Ascension is celebrated on Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter because that is forty days after Easter Sunday.
Pentecost follows ten days later, fifty days after Easter. Like Easter, Pentecost, which is the Church’s second most important liturgical celebration, is always on Sunday. The word “Pentecost” means fiftieth. Maybe if we called Ascension Tessarakost, we would not be able to move it- tessarkost is “fortieth” in Greek.
Forty days is important because in Saint Luke’s account of the Lord’s Ascension found at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, which should be considered as something like the fifth Gospel, a period of forty days is mentioned:
He presented himself alive to them by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God1The Risen Lord speaking to His closest disciples about the kingdom of God during this forty-day period is often referred to as “the Gospel of the forty days.” So, moving this solemnity throws our liturgical math off a little.
According to the Church, divine revelation is communicated to us via two interrelated but distinct modes: scripture and tradition. The Gospel of the forty days is about what is handed on through the Church’s tradition.
Despite the Lord speaking to them about the kingdom of God, it’s clear from our first reading that His closest disciples still did not understand what He taught them. This is why they ask, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”2
Their failure to grasp what they were taught led the disciples to ask that question. Short answer: No! Longer answer: No, not even maybe. God’s kingdom, which, in and through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is already present in the world, even if only in the form of a mustard seed, is not identifiable with any earthly kingdom, nation, or domain. This is fundamental Christian teaching!
Sadly, many Christians today are similarly confused. Speaking their confusion, the Lord refers them to Pentecost, when, just a few days hence, they “will be baptized with the holy Spirit.”3 It is then that they will begin to understand better.
This is why Blessed Pope Pius XII, in 1954, promulgated an entire encyclical letter on the Church’s supranationality. Being Catholic, as the word “Catholic” implies, means having an allegiance that transcends any ethnic or national identity.4 As the Church father, Justin Martyr insisted, because of our faith, Christians make the best citizens.5
Pentecost is the undoing of Babel and the beginning of the Church, which includes women and men of every race, tongue, people, and nation. Look around you, even here in our parish, you'll see the Church's catholicity.
Christ ascended so that He could send the Holy Spirit. By means of the Holy Spirit, the Lord can be closer to you than if He had remained bodily. The Holy Spirit is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence among, in, and through us. It is the Holy Spirit who transforms the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood.
It is the Holy Spirit who makes Christ present in and through all the sacraments. Along with the Eucharist, baptism anchors the sacramental economy of grace. It is holy baptism that allows you to receive Christ in Holy Communion.
Baptism impels us (or at least it should) to share the Gospel. In today's Gospel, the Lord gives His Church our mission. But that mission is not merely to baptize people. We are to make them disciples. Disciple-making, something with which the Church really struggles. It is a core ministry to engage in formation for transformation into Chritslikeness.
It’s been great to read so many news stories about record numbers of baptisms this Easter. This can easily become just a numbers game. In the end, numbers don’t matter. The Church’s retention rate for adults who join through OCIA isn’t very good. Much the same can be said for the young people who pass through sacramental preparation programs.
These are just some of the indications that we need to focus on making disciples, on becoming disciples, people who want to be like Christ. Part of becoming a disciple is to take up the Great Commission, given in today’s Gospel. It is the mission of the Church until the end of the age. Hence, being a disciple is to be a missionary disciple.
As the Lord’s disciples learned from the angel as they stood there looking up as Jesus ascended, being Christian isn’t about standing around staring at the sky and passively waiting for Christ’s return in a strikingly similar way to His ascending. Christian disciples, as Saint Paul insists, play to win.6 We don’t play merely not to lose.
Christ’s disciples are to make God’s kingdom a present reality and not view it as a dream deferred, as pie in the sky in the by and by. We need to level our gaze and bring good news to a world in such dire need of it. At the end of this Mass and every Mass, let us go in peace glorifying the Lord by our lives.
1 Acts 1:3.↩
2 Acts 1:6.↩
3 Acts 1:5.↩
4 Pope Pius XII. Encyclical Letter Ad Sinarum Gentem [On the Supranationality of the Church]. 7 October 1954.↩
5 Justin Martyr. First Apology, Chapter 4.↩
6 1 Corinthians 9:24.↩
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