Jose Cuisia Jr. money man, family man
Do we hear today’s Gospel hinting at spiritual directions? We get them straight from the mystery of the Ascension of Christ. The mystery tells us we either go up or down. If we do not follow the direction of Christ’s ascent, we will eventually fall down. We cannot be in a stationary position in the spiritual life. Like an aircraft that has taken flight, we cannot be suspended in midair.
Is that what it is when we reflect on the mystery of today, feeling present in spirit on the
What the mystery of Ascension means for us cannot be alienated from what the mystery means for Christ. Today Christ triumphs. How He humbled Himself: He left the Father’s throne, quietly took on flesh in the pure womb of a virgin, lay naked in a rough stable, fled from His own people into Egypt, lived the hidden 30 years a common laborer in Nazareth obedient to Joseph and Mary, suffered the unkindness and misunderstanding of His own town folks, paid the final price of our redemption by His passion and death. How He loved us to the dregs, shedding the very last drop of His life’s blood to free us from Satan’s power and effect our return home to heaven where we all belong. Now He is telling us to follow Him in His ascent to heaven.
Ascent to heaven is the direction we all must take. We do not wait until the end to make the ascent. It is a day to day living the mystery of the Ascension of Jesus: A moment to moment pause to ask ourselves, “Is this thought I am entertaining, this word I am about to utter, this action I am about to do follow the direction of Jesus’ ascent to heaven? Yes or no? If it is “yes” then following it would be an ascent. If it is ‘no’ then following it brings me down.” There is no half-yes or half-no that can make me float listlessly in mid-air. Otherwise we will be like the vapor, simply existing only to vanish into thin air.
There is a significant sentence in the preface of the Mass which gives the purpose of Christ’s Ascension, “that He might make us partakers of His divinity.” But that’s about the whole purpose of our existence. In one of the station homilies delivered by Pope Leo I during the Feast of the Ascension, he said: “. . . the ascension of Christ is also our exaltation . . . for today we have not only been confirmed as possessors of paradise, but in Christ we have scanned the very heights of heaven.”
That we have to be wary about which direction we take in our spiritual journey does not only touch the private dimensions of our life. Spiritual ascents with Christ take in, too, the whole social dimensions of nations and peoples. For there is a social dimension to every rising and falling. There are social sins which bring on war; there are social ascents which give us the longed for peace. There are divisions which wreak havoc; there is a love which brings on unity and solidarity in families and societies. But that will all depend on whether we are chained to earth by our sins; or ascending with Christ heavenwards in grace.
Ascension Sunday Lk 24:46-53
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