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 The Ascension of The Lord B

At the Vigil Mass

Entrance Antiphon Ps 68 (67): 33, 35 You kingdoms of the earth, sing to God; praise the Lord, who ascends above the highest heavens; his majesty and might are in the skies, alleluia.

Collect O God, whose Son today ascended to the heavens as the Apostles looked on, grant, we pray, that, in accordance with his promise, we may be worthy for him to live with us always on earth, and we with him in heaven. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

At the Mass during the Day

Entrance Antiphon Acts 1: 11 Men of Galilee, why gaze in wonder at the heavens? This Jesus whom you saw ascending into heaven will return as you saw him go, alleluia.

Collect   Gladden us with holy joys, almighty God, and make us rejoice with devout thanksgiving, for the Ascension of Christ your Son is our exaltation, and, where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Or:

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who believe that your Only Begotten Son, our Redeemer, Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

(May 20) St. Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444)

Most of the saints suffer great personal opposition, even persecution. Bernardine, by contrast, seems more like a human dynamo who simply took on the needs of the world. He was the greatest preacher of his time, journeying across Italy, calming strife-torn cities, attacking the paganism he found rampant, attracting crowds of 30,000, following St. Francis’s admonition to preach about “vice and virtue, punishment and glory.” Compared with St. Paul by the pope, Bernardine had a keen intuition of the needs of the time, along with solid holiness and boundless energy and joy. He accomplished all this despite having a very weak and hoarse voice, miraculously improved later because of his devotion to Mary. When he was 20, the plague was at its height in his hometown, Siena. Sometimes as many as 20 people died in one day at the hospital. Bernardine offered to run the hospital and, with the help of other young men, nursed patients there for four months. He escaped the plague but was so exhausted that a fever confined him for several months. He spent another year caring for a beloved aunt (her parents had died when he was a child) and at her death began to fast and pray to know God’s will for him. At 22, he entered the Franciscan Order and was ordained two years later. For almost a dozen years he lived in solitude and prayer, but his gifts ultimately caused him to be sent to preach. He always travelled on foot, sometimes speaking for hours in one place, then doing the same in another town. Especially known for his devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, Bernardine devised a symbol — IHS, the first three letters of the name of Jesus in Greek, in Gothic letters on a blazing sun. This was to displace the superstitious symbols of the day, as well as the insignia of factions (for example, Guelphs and Ghibellines). The devotion spread, and the symbol began to appear in churches, homes and public buildings. Opposition arose from those who thought it a dangerous innovation. Three attempts were made to have the pope take action against him, but Bernardine’s holiness, orthodoxy and intelligence were evidence of his faithfulness. General of a branch of the Franciscan Order, the Friars of the Strict Observance, he strongly emphasized scholarship and further study of theology and canon law. When he started there were 300 friars in the community; when he died there were 4,000. He returned to preaching the last two years of his life, dying while travelling. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today:   Acts 1:1‑11;   Psalm 46;   Ephesians 1: 17-23;   Mark 16:15-20

Jesus said to his disciples, Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.  Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.  And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.  After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.  Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.  (Mark 16:15-20)

The Ascension     Both during his public life and after his Resurrection, our Lord referred to his entry into glory. It was the climax of his entire mission, and both before and after his Resurrection he told his disciples that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and die so as to enter into his glory. Not long before his Passion our Lord took with him Peter, James and John, who would be the pillars of the infant Church, and went up a high mountain. There he was transfigured in glory. It was a prefiguring of what was to come. At the Last Supper our Lord prayed to his heavenly Father. His prayer was that he, Jesus, had glorified him here on earth, and now he asks that he, the Father, glorify him with that glory that had been his before the world ever was. So the purpose of our Lord’s life and mission was to give glory to the Father, to be glorified himself, and to bring all of us into a share in his glory. The world would share in the glory of God. He had relinquished the glory that was his as the Son of God in order to become man. Ascended into heaven, he now regained the glory that was his as God, which he had put away in becoming man. In celebrating the Ascension, we celebrate the glory of our Lord as God (Mark 16:15-20). But in ascending into heaven, our Lord was not simply assuming the state of glory that had been his before the world began. He was taking his seat at God’s right hand as man, too. In this sense we celebrate the glory of man, man understood as being embodied in Jesus and represented by him. In Jesus, the Son of Man and our brother, we ourselves were being given a stake at the right hand of God. Jesus, in his Ascension into heaven, involved the glorification of man. In Jesus, man ascended into glory above and beyond all that is sinful, broken and inglorious. The Resurrection of our Lord not only brought to the disciples a great joy at seeing their beloved Master with them once again. It brought to them the joy of knowing that if they lived and died in him they would rise in him, too. The Ascension of the Lord has a similar significance for the Christian, for not only can he hope to rise with Christ, but he can hope to share in his glory in heaven. So while the Ascension shows forth who Jesus is, it also shows forth the final vocation of all of us.

We are called to share in the glory of Christ with the Father. That is what we can look forward to, whatever be the vicissitudes of life. Mary, the first and greatest Christian, has shown us all the way. At the end of her earthly life she was taken up in glory, body and soul, to heaven because of her sinless union with her Son. She now shares, body and soul, in the glory of her divine Son. So then, what a glory it is for humanity that one of us is divine, and what a hope it provides for us all! Whatever be our sufferings and disappointments, we can look ahead to glory. This share in the divine life and glory has come to us with the gift of the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry, John the Baptist had told his disciples that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit, and in our first reading today (Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11) our Lord, before he ascended into heaven, tells his disciples that soon they would be baptized in the Holy Spirit. St John, the author of the Gospel, specifically tells us how, during his public ministry, Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive. St John comments that there was no Spirit as yet because Jesus had not yet been glorified. Today in thinking of the Ascension, we think of our Lord together with the Father, now poised to send the Holy Spirit. We celebrate the actual coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost next Sunday. He came to each of us at our baptism and he made us children of God. Our share in the glory of Christ is now hidden and is threatened by sin. It will be completed when we are taken up to be with him in glory hereafter, if we live a life worthy of our state as children of God. The Ascension of the Lord into heaven is the necessary preliminary to the coming of the Holy Spirit, and with his coming, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, dwells with the Church, making of the Church the living sacrament of God. Today let us contemplate our Lord leaving his disciples with his cosmic mission successfully completed. He enters heaven to the acclaim of all the holy ones and to the warm embrace of the Father in the love of the Holy Spirit. Christ is there as God once again in glory.

Jesus Christ is there at the right hand of the Father. As man, he shows to all of us what our true vocation is. Our vocation is to glory. Once he has ascended into heaven, Jesus is poised to send the Holy Spirit from the Father to the infant Church, and, through the ministry of the Church, to each of us. In the power of the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son make their abode with us in the Church, and enable us to live in them so as to prepare for an eternity in the glory of Jesus, ascended into heaven and seated at the right hand of the Father.

                                                                   (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.737-741 (The Holy Spirit and the Church)

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I can understand your keenness to receive the Holy Eucharist each day.  Those who feel they are children of God have an overpowering need of Christ.

                                                      (The Forge, no. 830)

 

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Second reflection: (John 6:16-21)