Ascension Sunday: Year B

Main Point: Living out Holiness which we have received.

Thank You:

Today has been the most joyous day of my life. There are no words that can truly express how I am feeling right now, but I am going to try. I am very grateful to my friends and family who have supported me and prayed for me during my time in seminary. Please continue to do so, I still have one more year. Thank you to my parents, who were the first witnesses of God’s love to me and my siblings. Because you first experienced the Father’s love, you were eager to share that with your children. Thank you to

What the Ascension means for us:

Today the Church celebrates an incredible solemnity, the Ascension of our Lord into Heaven. Today, Our Lord mounts his throne to shouts of joy. Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man now sits at the right hand of the Father, over all of creation Over, every power, dominion, and principality all the choirs of angels are now under not just God’s divinity but his humanity as well. Our once feeble, broken, and corrupted human nature, bound for nothing except suffering and death, now sits glorified at the right hand of the Father. This holy day deserves such a joyful celebration because it calls to mind what we are destined for. It shows exactly what our inheritance is as we just heard from St. Paul in the second reading. “May our hearts be enlightened that so that we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe.” St Paul urges the community of Ephesus and us as well to ponder this profound mystery of Jesus’s body now sitting next to Father. This mystery reminds us that the Church, Christ’s mystical Body, sits at the right hand of the Father. Christ is the Head of the Church and we, those who believe and have been baptized, are incorporated into Christ’s Body now sits at the throne of God. This is our inheritance. This is what we are destined for. This highest honor that none of us deserve has been graciously given to us God, and it is only made possible because of our baptisms.

It is by the sacrament of Baptism that we have been incorporated into Christ’s Body, the Church. Baptsim puts to death our old selves and makes us holy like God. We receive the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit and become his temple. God now dwells in us. The same love that constantly unites the Father and the Son together now dwells in us. He continuously draws every and unites every baptized member of Christ’s body to the Father, ceaslessly making us one. This is our calling this is what we are destined for. Not because of what we have done or anything we will do. We can never attain something so great on our own. It is only by God’s doing are able to receive such a gift.

We must remember it is because of God’s actions, what he has done for us are we made holy. There is this notion in Christianity today that if we exert enough energy, dedication or if we simply just try harder, then we will become holy. If I pray a certain amount of holy hours, or pray enough rosaries, or if I do not eat anything at all this friday, then I will not fall into this particular sin I have been struggling with. We cannot attain holiness this way. God does not distribute graces in accordance with amount of spiritual exercises we do. If I sleep on the floor or kneel the whole time during holy hour, then God will give me the grace to overcome this sin. The problem with this type of thinking is that when we fail, we believe start to believe that God is now angry with us, or I did not try hard enough. We begin to feel shame and trapped that the sin we struggle with will never be overcome.

Brothers and sisters, God has made you holy. We know what our inheritance is, we know what God has done for us and in us. He has already done so much in you. Everything we do in this life, whether it be at home, work or in school, should result from what we have received in our Baptisms because of what God has done for us. Everytime we go to pray we must remember what God has done in our lives

This inheritance and honor that God has graciously bestowed upon us is only possible because of our baptism. It is because of the sacrament of Baptism we have received this gift.

And Because there is no seperation between the Head and the Body, the Church now sits next to the Father, for if there was seperation, there would be no communion.

‘Look again whither he hath raised the Church! As though he were lifting it up by some engine, he hath raised it up to a vast height, and set it on yonder throne; for where the Head is, there is the body also. There is no interval of separation between the Head and the body; for were there a separation, then were the one no longer a body, then were the other no longer a head’ (Chrysostom)

D. J. Leahy, “The Epistle to the Ephesians,” in A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, ed. Bernard Orchard and Edmund F. Sutcliffe (Toronto; New York; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1953), 1122.

At first glance without much prayer and contemplation, it seems that the Lord’s ascension is a little sad. Our Savior leaving earth, leaving his friends and disciples while entrusting his own mission to them. This must have been very challenging for his apostles because they did not understand what Christ was doing. They even ask him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? (Acts 1:6) They did not understand what was