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| Flowers for Ascension |
Ascension, Mass Homily,
ASCENSION 2014
Among all the mysteries of our faith the importance of
the Mystery of the Lord’s bodily ascension into heaven is underlined for us in
several ways. First, it is mentioned in
the earliest of the Christian Creeds, from the very beginning of the
development of Dogma. These early Creeds
were meant to summarise the essential elements of the Church’s teaching for us. The Ascension is also mentioned in one breath
along with the Passion, death &
Resurrection of the Lord in the Canon of the Mass. And, very significantly, in our own day it
has been retained as one of the few remaining Holidays of Obligation where so
many of the other more “popular” feasts have been passed over.
So, there can be no doubting the centrality of the
mystery of the Ascension for our understanding of the whole of the Paschal
Mystery.
Let’s approach this understanding today by p rescinding from all of God’s other revelations to us.
Let’s go back to the dawn of creation itself, before any revelation from
God at all. The Psalmist helps us to do this by so many beautiful expressions
of wonder at God’s creation: “How great
is you name O Lord our God through all the earth! Praise him sun and moon! Praise him shining stars! Praise God from the earth; sea creatures and
all the oceans! Fire and hail, snow and
mist, stormy winds that obey his word!
This sense of wonder at God’s marvellous creation is at the foundation of our appreciation of the mystery
of Our Lord’s bodily ascension into heaven.
This comes about because when we have first praised him for the wonders
of all creation we then praise him even more for the wonder of our own
being. Men and angels alone, the very
peak of God’s creation, can understand and appreciate the gift of existence and
life and offer thanks for it.
But then, from the wonder of the created world, and
from the wonder of our own being, we are drawn by the mystery of the bodily
ascension of Christ to see in it a pledge and promise that that this world of
time, and we with it, are to be lifted up and fused into the very heaven of
heavens. The world we live in is so
beautiful in so many ways! What then
will it be like as the new heaven and new earth that God promises to make it
for us. And what will we ourselves be as
we too are lifted up by the resurrection of the dead. Life is to be changed, not ended. And if we would get a glimpse of it’s
ultimate destiny we need only look up with the apostles and see “Christ, the
head and first fruits of our human race, ascending bodily into the heavens”.
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