The Ascension of the Lord
In today’s Gospel Jesus said to his disciples, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned……. So, then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere….” Mk 16: 15-20.
Human history reached a turning point with the death and resurrection of Jesus. But before he Ascended into Heaven, he commissioned his Apostles to go out and announce the good news of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. This was to be their future Mission.
The Ascension story gives us a sense of completion of Jesus’s life on earth. After his resurrection He appeared to his disciples several times to confirm and reconfirm the truth that he was alive. He continues to teach them as if to round off their instructions, promises them the Holy Spirit but most of all he gives them their Mission to go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News. This Mission to the World is the climax of everything - he tells them that his message and ways must be carried to the ends of the earth. Then and only then will the dreams and hopes of the prophets be fulfilled.
Their Mission was both easy and hard: easy to understand but hard to carry out. It was to teach others what he had taught them. He asked them to follow his ways, and they were to ask others to follow Christ’s ways.
Their mission (Christ’s Mission) must continue to the end of time but he assures them “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” With all the changes in the church and in society over the years, neither Jesus’ way nor his message has changed.
Ascension Sunday invites us to raise our gaze to heaven where we belong with our Heavenly Father and Christ our brother. It is towards that destination that we are moving. But before we reach there, our Mission is to be a co-builder of God’s Kingdom here on earth.
It is our turn to continue this Mission and to write a new chapter of the gospel each day, by leading upright and Christlike lives in difficult and trying circumstances of the world we live in. Others will read what we write by what we say and do and the kind of lives we live.
So, what is the gospel that we are proclaiming or what is our Mission at the present time???? Do we experience the “Joy of the Gospel” or Mission described for us by Pope Francis?
Ascension Sunday invites us to raise our gaze to heaven where we belong with our Heavenly Father and Christ our brother. It is towards that destination that we are moving. But before we reach there, our Mission is to be a co-builder of God’s Kingdom here on earth.
Fr John McEvoy
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