Today’s the fortieth day of the Easter season on which we recall each year the Ascension of the Risen Lord into Heaven. Over the years, I’ve heard liturgists jokingly refer to this solemnity of the Church year as “Up, up, and away” and “Going, going, gone” Thursday.
Despite the irreverence, commemorating this solemnity is important for many reasons, perhaps the most important being that it calls to mind what constitutes an authentic faith by means of using a negative. Today’s readings from Scripture suggest that an authentic faith is lived not frozen in time, standing in place, and looking up at the sky.
That's a “childish faith”—an inauthentic faith—not the “childlike faith”—the authentic faith—Jesus said should characterize his disciples.
Back to that negative: In today’s first reading we heard about two men dressed in white garments who stood beside the apostles who are doing just that and asked, “Why are you standing there looking at the sky?”
Did your ears perk up when you heard that “white garment” mentioned?
It’s the syndona we heard about on the Second Sunday of Easter. To reiterate: When people converted to the Christian “way” in the early Church, converts removed their clothes prior to being baptized—symbolizing “turning away from being the old person of this world”—and then waded into the baptistry pool. Upon emerging from it following their ritual baptism, the neophytes were dried off and clothed in a “syndona,” a white cloth—symbolizing their rising to new life and putting on the new person who’s clothed in Christ and a member of “The Way.”
The symbolism is extremely important for us as disciples today and shouldn’t be overlooked: In effect, two newly baptized Christians were telling the apostles “You’ve received the Holy Spirit...just like us! Get with the program!” The situation would be similar to those converts who went through RCIA this past year and were baptized right here at the parish during the Easter Vigil 41 days ago. On this Ascension Thursday 2021, those neophytes march straight into Archbishop Perez’s office at 222 North Seventeenth Street in Philadelphia and tell the Archbishop: “You aren’t using the gifts of the Holy Spirit you’ve been given to do what you’re supposed to be doing! Get with the program!”
The point is: With the Ascension of the Risen Lord into Heaven, it’s no longer the Risen Lord who does the work of living and teaching the gospel but each of us—the baptized and confirmed—who the Risen Lord has endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and have been entrusted with his saving mission. An authentic faith is like the gospel. It isn’t a “book” placed on a shelf or coffee table and left undisturbed but is the “Good News” teaching us a new “way of life”—the “Way”—to the truth—the “Truth”—that informs and shapes our daily life—the “Life.” An authentic faith is lived as Jesus taught through his words and actions, the success of which is measured in term of “making disciples of all people, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (vv. 19-20).
To sum up: An authentic faith is lived and taught as the baptized and confirmed “Do this in memory of me.”
That sets a rather arduous standard: Our words and actions should give others a highly motivating reason to want to be disciples. Put in the form of a question, the standard of judgment asks:
During this past year, how many people have become practicing Catholics as a result hearing you speak about your faith and seeing you live it out in your daily life?
By that standard, many—if not most of us including myself—may be miserable failures, just as those two newly-baptized men reminded the Apostles of their miserable failure to witness to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead after the Ascension of the Risen Lord to Heaven. Yes, the Apostles were given the gifts of the Holy Spirit to bring the gospel—the “Good News”—to the ends of the earth; but, they weren’t living or teaching it, standing frozen in the past and staring upward, contemplating heavenly things. The Apostles had forgotten what Jesus taught about an authentic faith as it is to be lived: It is arduous work, namely, through their words and actions, to provide people a motivating reason to convert to the way, the truth, and the life.
That represents our challenge from today’s scripture readings this Solemnity of the Ascension: To get with the program!
Rather than allow our failures to evangelize others discourage us, we need to recall the promise the Risen Lord made to the Apostles—in effect what was his last will and testament before ascending to Heaven: “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (v. 20). This last will and testament assures us of the constant and consoling presence of the Holy Spirit who freely offers to heal us of our omissions, failures, and sins by sanctifying us. All we have to do is to open ourselves anew each day with ever-increasing trust to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Having already been entrusted with a syndona when we were baptized, our challenge today is to redouble our efforts to remember we have become a new creation and have been clothed in Christ. It’s time to “walk the talk” not just “talk the talk.”
If we’re to do so, however, we need to invite the Holy Spirit back into the center of our lives.
How might we do that?
It just so happens the next nine days—the days between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday—provide the opportunity to do a novena. The prayer for this novena—to be said each of the next nine days—should be familiar to all of us:
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love....and You shall renew the face of the earth.
Living an authentic faith—a “childlike faith,” as Jesus taught—isn’t about the mysterious things of Heaven but the reality of life here on earth. It isn’t lived “up there” but “out there.” It also isn’t a matter of the mind—gazing up there and wondering about those matters—but of the body—proclaiming the gospel in our words and actions.
This is how the Risen Lord works through us, is made incarnate in today’s world, and confirms the Word through its accompanying signs. But, we must be willing to proceed along “the Way” by “going into the whole world and proclaiming the gospel to every creature” humbly, gently, patiently, and bearing with one another with love.
Having ascended to Heaven, the Risen Lord is remains among us through power of the Holy Spirit, the source of our strength, perseverance, and joy. Having been confirmed in our Catholic faith, the Spirit has already endowed us with all the gifts we need if we’re to be witnesses of the Risen Lord in our words and actions as we “make disciples of all people, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
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