When you train for a pilot’s licence, the first big challenge is to fly a circuit around the airstrip yourself. It is called the first solo. Many years ago when I was training for a pilot’s licence, the instructor suggested to me that it was time for me to fly by myself. I suggested to him reasons why I was not quite ready. We landed and taxied, as we normally did, the instructor working the radio and me flying the plane. As I looked at the instruments I heard him say on the radio: “Jandakot Tower, India Bravo Papa, request first solo”, after which he leapt from the plane and ran across the taxiway and grass. It was time, even though I thought was not ready, but I picked up the radio to confirm the towers assignment of runway to me, lined up and took off, and landed again. After that, the sky was the limit and the whole world of flying opened itself up to me. If I did not accept the challenge, I could not have moved on and would not have grown. All the theory would have been wasted.
The Ascension had to happen. None of the disciples wanted it to happen, for they liked having Jesus close. Jesus needed to go so that all the faith hope and love he had given them could bloom and spread far beyond the confines of those whom Jesus could personally touch. The Ascension made the message of Jesus soar!
The Ascension marks a fundamental change in the way that the followers of Jesus relate to him. When Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection, she wanted to hug him. Instead he tells her: No not hold me, for I have not ascended to my father. Just as Jesus had opened to us a new way of relating to god, he shows us a new way of relating to him. It does not have to be physical. In this age where we have to see everything to believe, he asks us to feel and know him in our hearts. Of course, we know that this is a far stronger presence of the risen Christ than if he was among us physically, for he stays with us always. Pope Benedict teaches us: Ascension does not mean departure into a remote region of the cosmos but, rather, the continuing closeness that the disciples experience that it becomes a source of lasting joy. [i]
To live our Christian life, we need to know that the presence of Christ is always with us. He has promised to always be with his Church, and indeed he is. In this liturgy he remains with us in various ways: in the word proclaimed, in the priest who acts in persona Christi, in the Eucharistic species, in the congregation as the body of Christ. He is here among us, Christ resurrected and ascended. The apostles looked in the sky and the angel asked: why stare into the sky, he is ascended. We are called to live as people of the resurrection; bearing witness to the Christ we know in our hearts by going out to all nations, baptising them in the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them all that Christ commands and reminding them that is with us always, yes, until the end of time.
Homily, OLQP, Ascension Sunday 5th June 2011.
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