Ascension B: Jesus went up, We go forth.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Have you ever watched the show Beat Bobby Flay? In case you don’t know, Bobby Flay is a celebrity chef trained at the French Culinary Institute and, prior to working on the Food Network, was a chef at some of the fanciest restaurants in New York City. If you’ve never seen this show, Wikipedia summarizes it by saying, “In the first round, two guests, often a celebrity chef and a friend of (Bobby) Flay, introduce two contestants who cook for 20 minutes against each other using an ingredient chosen by (Bobby) Flay. The guests then determine who cooked the better dish and will face Flay in the second round. The winning contestant then chooses a dish for both the contestant and (Bobby) Flay to cook in the second round which lasts for 45 minutes. The winner of the second round is determined by three judges in a blind taste test.” Bobby Flay has a 61% success rate in beating the contestant, which makes me wonder if that’s because he’s really that good or if there may be another factor. 

Today we celebrate the Ascension, which took place forty days after Easter. The problem is that this is supposed to take place this past Thursday and today is supposed to be the Seventh Sunday in Easter. A number of years ago, the bishops of the United States heard from priests that many people were skipping the Holy Day of Obligation that was Ascension Thursday so they decided to move it to Sunday permanently and, essentially, get rid of the Seventh Sunday of Easter. The dioceses in Nebraska and a few others in the United States have defied this change but, for the most part, parishes in the United States celebrate Ascension Thursday Sunday, as I like to call it with a smart alec smirk on my face. What makes this day so important that we had to move it to preempt another Sunday?

If you look into the first reading and gospel, you could get a sense that the event isn’t even all that important. Look at the descriptions we have of it. St. Luke, in the first reading, simply said “...he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight…” That’s it? What did it sound like? What did the cloud look like? Was Jesus excited or sad or melancholic to leave? There are so many details missing from this and St. Mark doesn’t really fill in any of them in the Gospel. He’s even more vague. “So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.” How does St. Mark know he went to heaven? Did he have a vision of this or was it from something Jesus told him at some point during his earthly life? 

I think the reason they’re so vague is because, even though the Ascension of Jesus was an important event, the really important thing isn’t actually how he went up to heaven but what he left behind. St. Paul, in the second reading, connected the Ascension to the Incarnation. In other words, Jesus was in heaven as the second person of the Trinity from eternity before he was conceived in the womb of Mary, meaning he is just returning to where he was before he became human in the Ascension. This is, obviously, different from us, human beings, who only have existed on this earth in a time-bound way. Saint Paul says, of Jesus, that his return happens so that he “might fill all things.” 

He does this by empowering the church for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ until we all attain three things: the unity of faith, knowledge of the Son of God, and maturity to the full stature of Jesus. You see, it’s hard to become the body of Christ when Jesus is still bodily present among us. It’s like those people trying to beat Bobby Flay. I’m sure they have great dishes that we’d all love to eat but they’re competing with a professionally trained, world renowned chef and they’re intimidated. Imagine trying to evangelize someone while Jesus was standing behind you. We’d just turn to him and say, “Why don’t you tell them about yourself.” He had to leave for us to be able to become his heart, hands, and voice in this world, to become his body.

How is Jesus calling you to build up the church to the unity of faith in Him?