Ascension

The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47; Ephesians 4:1-13; Mark 16:15-20

Leave-takings are at times necessary for life.

A son or daughter needs to leave home if they are to mature and come into their own. Sometimes it is the parents who must leave, that is, die, for some adult children to get from under parental wings. In search of healing and wholeness, people need to leave unhealthy and abusive marriages. I’ve had to request leaving a parish because it was not a good environment for me. Strangely, people may need to leave the Church to grow spiritually and be authentic. For the sake of the family, taking a new employment position across country is a mixed blessing. How many of our relatives left ancestral homes to immigrate due to war, famine, economics, and persecution?

And leave-takings are not just tangible moves but can also be psychological, emotional, or spiritual. There is the letting go of destructive self-images which can be more agonizing than physical pain. The letting go of a debilitating grief, an emotional hurt or memory, a fearful holding on so tightly in the spiritual life that we are drained of fully living.

Leave-takings are uneasy. They entail loss. A double loss. The loss felt by those leaving and those being left behind. We abandon what is familiar, even if it caused us heart-ache or self-destructive behavior, before we can reach out to where we want or need to go. Presuming we even know where we are headed.

I wonder what Jesus felt today.

The question posed to the disciples, “Why are you standing there looking up at the heavens?” is absurd. Why wouldn’t they look up?

Why does a parent look down the street as their child drives a car alone for the first time? In all her final years, mom used to always look out the window as I drove away. Why do we wait until a friend disappears around a corner?

Moses must die for Joshua to exercise his leadership role. Elijah must be caught up in the whirlwind before Elisha can receive a double portion of prophetic spirit. And Jesus must leave if the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, is to be poured upon the world and blown through the doors and windows of the Church.

I’ve come to feel a certain melancholy on the feast of the Ascension. So many emotions; the mingling of leaving, the talk of returning, the glory of the Father and unknown futures. But all leave-takings are mixed, are the not? Yet they are necessary for life to mature and flourish.

Who has recently left your life?

Whom have you left?

What aspect of your personal life needs to be discarded?

Where is the movement of the Holy Spirit in the complexity of our lives that we might mature and flourish?