Why Do You Stand Here Idle?
A homily for the Ascension of the Lord
Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 1:17-23
Matthew 28:16-20
Our first reading today contains a very interesting dialogue between Jesus and the other Apostles right before Jesus ascends into Heaven. The Apostles ask Our Lord “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the Kingdom to Israel?” This means that after everything that they had seen, everything that they had been through in three years of life with Jesus, everything that they had been taught and come to understand about Christ's fulfillment of Messianic prophecy, they are asking Jesus if Jesus is going to restore the Kingdom of God to Israel, or make the Kingdom of God come visually upon Earth at that moment right before Jesus is about to go and ascend into Heaven. One can only imagine what might have gone through Our Lord's head at that moment. Perhaps it was something along the lines of “you mean after three years of this you're still asking that question?”
Jesus’ answer to the Apostles is one that we today should remember and can still learn from. “It is not for you to know the times and seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority.” In other words, God is going to bring about the fullness of the Kingdom of God and the end of this present age when He chooses to, and not before then. It isn't your place to be overly concerned with it. That's quite a statement for Jesus to make considering that the promise was made as soon as he ascended that just as they saw Jesus ascend into heaven, one day he would return. So as he ascended Jesus was keen to remind his disciples that he would be back, but that the fullness of His kingdom and His Glory would be restored in God's time, not in human reckoning. However, we do know from this very reading in the Book of Acts that as the Lord Jesus ascended, two angels came down and informed the Apostles that one day Jesus would return just as they had seen him taken up.
We have the biblical promise in multiple places in Scripture that Our Lord will return, and he will return glorified, physically, and bodily to announce the Consummation of the Last Age, the End of All Things as we know it. However, until that happens we as believers have a responsibility to proclaim the Gospel to everyone we meet, both with and without words, until the Lord returns or until he calls us each to Himself. The reason why those angels came down to announce to the Apostles that Jesus would one day return was to actually chastise them for standing around when Jesus had just been taken up into Heaven and now they had a job to do.
Jesus had already given them the instructions. He told them to go and teach All Nations and baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He told them to return to Jerusalem until they were imbued with power from on high, which would happen nine days after our Lord ascended. By the way, that was the first novena, that's where the Church gets the custom of novenas, the word means “nine.” After Pentecost, what were they then to do? Go and spread the Gospel everywhere. We are all called to continue that mission as if our lives depended upon it because our Eternal Life does depend on it. Living the Gospel and sharing it with others is our most basic duty as Catholics, as Christian believers. Just as the early Apostles were told not to stand around staring at the sky, we are not called to limit our relationship with God to an hour on Sunday. We are called to have such a relationship with God that that relationship is worth sharing and spreading.
When he was here on Earth, Jesus repeatedly warned his followers that he was not always going to be physically with them. Sometimes he did this in a more cryptic way, but it was still pretty clear what he was trying to say. Sometimes he was much more open and direct when he told them this, such as when he told them that they would always have the poor with them to care for, but they would not always have him. On the night of his Last Supper, however, Jesus was very clear. He explained to the Apostles that He would soon be returning to the Father, and He actually explained to them that they can't get on with their mission if he is still around. Jesus says, however, they are going to receive the Paraclete, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit who would continue to guide them and lead them to the fullness of Truth.
It is extremely easy for us, in the religious and political climate of the present time, to wonder where God is, where Jesus is in the present chaos (and yes, while it has always been that way to a great degree, we live in an increasingly chaotic society and world, one in which the institutional Church is not immune from the effects of chaotic drift), but Jesus promised us that he wouldn't leave us orphans. He promised the Apostles that even as he left them forty days after his Resurrection, that not only would he be back one day, but he wasn't going to leave them alone even as he was leaving. That promise applies to us today, just as it did to the followers of Jesus on the day of the Ascension.
Even as Jesus was about to ascend into Heaven, the apostles were looking for and expecting the fulfillment of his promise as Messiah, and they were still expecting to see it with immediate effect. In the Ascension, Jesus is showing us that His mission isn't complete because our mission to spread the Gospel isn't complete. Jesus' mission will only be complete when he returns in glory and every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, and Christ presents the Church triumphant finally and fully to the Father.
Why did Jesus have to leave after he rose from the dead, and after he gave his followers those final instructions during the forty days before the Ascension? The Holy Spirit could not fully come until that happened, that is certainly true. But even more than this, the earth was never Jesus' home, just as it is not our home. Christ had to return to the place from which he came, just as the Father wishes all of us one day to do. Where Jesus goes, we are called to follow.
Jesus wants all of us to join Him in the Father's House, to join Him in establishing that new Heaven and new Earth because the former things will pass away, to reign with him for all Eternity. Both in Sacred Scripture and in the Church's understanding of the Last Things and the hereafter we only get a glimpse, although it is a glorious glimpse, of what that Eternal Life with Our Lord will be like. As believers in Jesus Christ that is our hope, that this is the joy we will one day experience. Eternal life, yes, but Eternal Life in the beatific vision with Jesus Christ in Union with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever.
The Ascension of Our Lord happened in order to show us exactly where it is we are called to end up. Whether we choose to follow Jesus there is up to us to decide. He has shown us the way, and the Lord has given us everything that we need to succeed on that journey. Let's not be so attached to the things of this world that we're not ready to take that journey on the Last Day!