The Ascension of the Lord---Liturgical Cycle C

Lectionary Readings

Homily
In the bible reading today we are presented with two different accounts of the same event by the same author! Luke concludes his Gospel with the story of the ascension, the “going away” of Jesus. That same story coupled with the command of being His (Jesus’) witnesses, also forms the beginning of Luke Acts.

The Gospel account was developed long before Acts and thus has a far more concise rendition. The account in Acts, while basically the same narration, elaborates and interprets the Gospel story. It is the development, the interpretation that we want to focus our attention on, because it is this development that points out to us how the apostolic church was enlightened to understand the fact of the ascension, of Jesus’ going away.

You see, His going away caused great anxiety in the infant church. Luke helps his readers to catch the emotional impact by giving us, in the infancy narrative, the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus absent, lost, to his parents for three days. We of our time can empathize with parents whose child is missing.

The reason for his staying in the temple, you recall, will be the same reason for his ascension to the father—i.e. to be about His Father’s affairs.

By the time the book of Acts was written it was obvious to the early Christians that the Kingdom preached by Jesus was not going to be something imposed from above, something handed to them on a silver platter. The real message of Jesus was beginning to sink in. The individual believer, as well as the community of believers (the Church), were to be witnesses to the Kingdom, to bring the Kingdom into being both in each one’s own heart and to the world each touches. The Christians were to be Jesus to our world. In other words, each one of us must be about our heavenly Father’s affairs: the coming of the Kingdom.

This will be a major theme of our church’s Easter celebration—to renew our baptismal commitment to be witnesses of God’s Kingdom to the world each of us touches, and to do so together as Church, as a community of disciples.

Those baptized in the Spirit are not to stand around looking up to heaven, but to go out from Jerusalem into the whole world with the message of the Gospel, of the Kingdom. We, you and I, are numbered among that company of believers, the community of disciples.

We must recommit ourselves to our mission of witnesses to the Kingdom, to God’s Way, which is the Way of Jesus.

--Fr. Pat

Excerpt from "A Catholic's Companion: Liturgical Cycle C" (c)2000 C. Patrick Creed
Published by Watchmaker Press. Maggie Hettinger, editor