Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
One of the great things about mothers is that they generally know how to make a house into a home. Whether as a family you have as much money as Warren Buffett, or you’re struggling to make ends meet, a mother has a way of making a place feel comfortable, and making it a place where you want to return. Home is the place you know you can go back, even if things aren’t going so well. It’s the place where there is love and acceptance of the person, even if not everything the person does is accepted. Home, as the saying goes, is where the heart is, and where mom is, there is always a lot of heart.
Today, in the convergence of the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord and Mother’s Day, we celebrate in the fact that Jesus has prepared a home for us, and is waiting for us to go there. We have not been there, but the disciples saw Him go there. Jesus ascended into heaven, our true home, and wants us to go there. Heaven is the place of ultimate love, as those who live there forever are embraced by God, who is Love Itself. Jesus is not our mother, but He wanted to show us the way home. He has taken our Blessed Mother there, body and soul through the assumption, just as He is present there through the Ascension. There are members of our Catholic family there already, the saints, both those who are canonized and those who are known only to God, hopefully including our mothers who have gone before us.
In the meantime, our Mother, the Church, helps us to allow Christ to live in us. It cannot be forced. No one can force us to live life in imitation of Jesus. Holy Mother Church helps us through her laws, her rules, but also through her liturgy. The Letter to the Hebrews talks about how Jesus entered into the true sanctuary in heaven. And in the Solemnity of the Ascension, we celebrate that Christ is seated forever at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us. Because He is there, in the heavenly sanctuary, our true home, we can enter through His way, to participate in His worship as High Priest of the New Covenant in His Blood.
In the liturgy, we are given a taste of heaven. Of course, this isn’t heaven; this is Adrian (to paraphrase the movie “Field of Dreams”). And because we live in a fallen world, even our liturgy is a shadow of the eternal liturgy in our heavenly home, which will be perfect. But we get a taste of heaven in the Mass, where God is made known to us, just as He gives Himself to us in His Word and the Body and Blood of Jesus. We get a taste of heaven in the Mass as we gather in a community, part of the communion of saints. Of course, in heaven the only ones there will be perfected, and none of us is there yet. But still, we get a taste of being in the communion of the saints of heaven as we gather here on earth. We get a taste of heaven through the light, shining through our stained-glass windows, giving us a glimpse of what a glorified body might look light through the images of the saints that we have in our stained-glass windows. We get a taste of heaven as we have union with (communion) God. In all these ways, Holy Mother Church prepares us for the home that her Groom, Jesus, has prepared for us.
Sadly, and some of you know this all too well, sometimes children don’t go home. Sometimes they choose to stay away from home for a variety of reasons. And God will not force us to go home to heaven. If we choose to live our own life, a life in contradiction to what Jesus teaches us, then we will not go home, will not go to the place of love and joy and peace. But I pray that, by the power of the Holy Sprit, we will use the grace God gives us to live the life of Christ, to let Christ live in us, so that we can go to the place God has prepared for us, the love and joy and peace of heaven, our true home.
