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May 03, 2008
7th Sunday Ascension - Going it Alone
I would never have called my father a liberal, at least in the context we use that term today. He was always a careful and conservative man. He managed to get his family through the great depression of the Thirties which means, of course, that he managed his money carefully.
I can remember receiving only two “major” gifts from my father as I was growing up: He bought me a wristwatch for my high school graduation. On the train station when I was headed off for basic training in the U.S. Army, he shook my hand and I found there a fifty-dollar bill! Now, mind you, fifty dollars was no small change in those days, but I remember him saying: “Here’s a little something just in case you need it.” Then he gave me a hug, something he rarely did. He was conservative, of course!
Nonetheless, I learned something from my father on that day at the railroad station: He was ultimately a softhearted, sentimental person. He also knew that this was the last time I would be part of the family. It turned out to be true. I never returned home again for any long period of time.
So, as I recall it, this was an important moment for my father. Difficult as it was for him, he managed to say goodbye, even with a few tears in his eyes.
This recollection reminds me of the line from one of Shakespeare’s plays (I think it was Romeo and Juliet) “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
Well, I don’t know how sweet parting is, but I think all of us would agree that parting is something we do not eagerly look forward to.
The problem is that at this point in our life many things will change, nothing will ever be quite the same again. We will be on our own, for good or ill. Perhaps we could honestly say that at a parting we are all a little scared, especially if this is the first time we have left our family. What if we flunk out of college? What if our first job turns out to be more than we can handle? Could we ever go home again without embarrassment?
By the way, that phrase came from the title of a book by Thomas Wolfe: You Can’t Go Home Again.
It seems to be true: Once you leave the familiar confines of the place where you grew up, you will find that it is never the same even if you decide to go back. What is fundamentally different, of course, is you. You have changed in the meantime. So, if we do go home again, it will not be the same person who goes there.
I wanted to talk a little about leave-taking because that is what we are asked to think about today on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord.
Perhaps the word we use to identify this day is in some sense deceptive because implies a “going up,” Jesus’ going up to heaven, back to His Father. I have no doubt that at some point after Jesus’ resurrection He did indeed leave his friends. Whether Jesus “went up” is a question. But for the early disciples, “up” meant the place where God was. This was their sense of cosmology, their sense of the world. If Jesus went anywhere, it had to be up.
But we can set cosmology aside and simply ask about the implications of Jesus’ leaving. What is really clear is that Jesus, in the last few years of his ministry, developed a very close relationship with some very ordinary people, men and women, mostly working class folks. What is also clear is that he depended on them to help him fulfill his ministry. They were to be his trusted confidants. They traveled with Him; they preached as best they could, they took the responsibility of sharing bread with people. In simplest words, they were a “band of brothers.”
I can’t help but think, therefore, that after Jesus’ death and resurrection he must have come to the point where he needed to say goodbye to this band of brothers and sisters and that this must have given him a sense of sadness. After all, they had all gone through a lot together, some good times and some bad times.
So, it is interesting to notice that on the day he “headed for home,” Jesus wanted to make sure that his disciples would not be in complete despair over his going. He says to them: “Behold I am with you always, even until the end of the age.”
He did not say here how he was to be with them, but, for sure, this was not to be the end of the great adventure: Jesus gives his friends a task to continue working on: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The logical question to ask, therefore, is this: What did Jesus expect would happen at “the end of the age,” at a point when the last disciple had passed on? Was this to be the end of the great adventure of preaching the kingdom of God?
Well, I have to believe that Jesus was smart enough to know that at some point his disciples would not be able to carry on his work. So, the only conclusion I can come to is that Jesus meant for his work to be carried on to the end of every age, throughout all of history. That has to be the only sensible way to understand Jesus’ work, namely that it now belongs to us, to his Church, with the help of the Spirit to carry it forward.
Of course, this work is more than about baptizing. It’s about all the ministries that we have learned to take upon ourselves as Catholic Christians: Lectors, Eucharistic ministers, catechists, visitors to the sick, comforters of the dying, et cetera. In short, there are pastoral leaders of all sorts available, depending on our unique gifts.
So, in the end we must say that we do not know whether Jesus was sad that he had to “go home.” Given what we do now know from history, we would have to say that He doesn’t need to worry. We’re trying our best to “keep things together.” Sure, we’ve made some mistakes, but, after all, we’re human, the Church is human, but we can still depend on Jesus to keep his word. “I will be with you until the end of the age.”
Posted by Cindy Lentine on May 3, 2008 04:22 PM.
