16th May, 2010 Ascension - C
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Today’s feast of the Ascension is really the fulfilment of God’s ultimate promise to us…… and the hope of our final destiny…. To be WITH God in Heaven, forever……
Jesus, (ascending to Heaven to be with the Father, from whom he came) promises that he will come and make us part of his Father’s Heavenly house…. When our earthly life is completed….. the Virgin Mary’s Assumption (body and soul into heaven) is the echo of what Christ has achieved in his Ascension.
Today’s feast is really the assurance that, as followers of Jesus, we are all in the same boat…..
Speaking of boats…. There is a story of a shipwreck at sea….. and the survivors got into the only remaining life-raft…… //… they were in the liferaft for SO LONG that the ones in the front started calling themselves ‘the front row’ and the ones in the back called themselves ‘the back row.’ And they started organising their day around this reality….
One day, the boat got a hole in it…. And started taking on water…. A person in the backrow said, ‘thank goodness the hole sprung up in the front…and not here in the back…... Otherwise we would have been in trouble……. “
Crazy!!!!
They forgot that they were IN THE SAME BOAT…. Our needs and future are interlinked……
The good news today is that WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT… and its Jesus’ boat!! Jesus is the captain, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and he is taking us on a journey that will end with the Father in Heaven…… Jesus promises to lead us through the blessings and challenges of life…. To the Father’s Kingdom../..
Jesus is returning to the Father… but he is still with us through the Holy Spirit. .. He now calls upon his disciples… upon us… to keep his work going ….. to keep spreading his message of good news and keep living and proclaiming the good news…
We are indeed all on the journey to the kingdom in its fullness….. and each of us are in the same boat… we are all brothers and sisters in God’s family…..
We often pray, for example in the Lord’s Prayer… that “Thy Kingdom come”….. But we are not praying that the world ends….. we are, rather, praying for a new world where Jesus’ values are fully and completely revealed and lived and experienced….. We want all of creation to be renewed and recreated in accordance with Jesus’ vision for the world…. All we do and say is directed to helping God’s Kingdom to be established in its fullness…
If Jesus had not returned to the Father, we would still have been saying… there is is there… or here he is here…… but now… by returning to Heaven and sending the Holy Spirit to us …. Jesus is NOW “all IN all” and Jesus makes his home in our hearts and in our world. All the while, we work to make our homes, our workplaces and our town into places of Christian values and action…
Through our faithful following of Jesus, the spirit can help us to make Jesus present in the midst of the a reality made of selfishness, of undue privileges, of arrogance .. or political and religious power…. Of indifference towards the poor and of hunger,,,, Jesus ascension tells us … don’t stand looking up in the clouds.. there is work to be done… there is no time but the present… Jesus was in a hurry to bring his ministry to all people…. He now entrusts his ministry to and through us… there is no time to lose… God wants us to be about his business… right now… with the help of the Spirit…
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REFERENCES:
· FR. PAUL W. KELLY
· MISSION 2000 – PRAYING SCRIPTURE IN A CONTEMPORARY WAY. YEAR c. BY MARK LINK S.J.
· 2010 – A BOOK OF GRACE-FILLED DAYS. BY ALICE CAMILLE.
· SHARING THE WORD THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR. GUSTAVO GUTIERREZ.
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