Today
in the feast of the Ascension of Our Lord, which our diocese has
moved from last Thursday to today, Jesus Christ has taken our human
nature into heaven, even into the Blessed Trinity itself, the
ultimate destiny God has created us for. In Jesus, God has come down
from heaven to earth, even to the realm of the dead, with one
specific mission, to reunite man to God in a definitive and
irrefutable way. That goal is now accomplished for us, since Christ,
in His very humanity, has gone up through the clouds to His Father.
Sitting at the Father's right hand, His kingdom has begun throughout
the entire world within His Church. As God-united-with-man, He never
ceases to intercede for the human nature He has redeemed by His
Resurrection and continues to bear into eternity.
We,
like the disciples, perhaps watch in astonishment. But the angels,
whom those disciples had hardly noticed right in front of them,
remind us to get our heads out of the clouds and get down to
business! While our hearts and minds remain in heaven, our hands and
feet are still on earth. As Christ has fulfilled His mission in His
Ascension, the Church's mission is just beginning, and so the
Apostles must make that transition from prayerful learning and
training under Christ into pro-active service to the Gospel: both its
proclamation and spreading, and also the ministry of love to others.
As a parish, we reflect on our own commitment to this service the
Gospel demands of us. Do we serve the poor, the outcast, and each
other within the one Body of Christ? To help us open our hearts anew
to this call from God, I invite Aaron Wall to come forward and share
his journey of growth in stewardship of service.
No comments:
Post a Comment