I have this hypothesis that the most transformative part of getting older is the accumulation of goodbyes. They add up, and it changes you. Part of it is learning appreciation and gratitude. You stop taking things for granted when you find out they’re fragile and might go away. It can also make us more focused on eternal things, as our experiences prove so incredibly fulfilling and yet awaken in us a yearning for something this world cannot give. Something beyond all the goodbyes. Some kind of oneness that doesn’t break apart and drift away.
Some people go to extraordinary lengths to avoid saying goodbye... they’ll arrange to just sort of disappear without ceremony. Others make a habit of denial, pretending that nothing is really changing when it’s really changing quite a lot. The most tragic is the person who becomes so scarred by loss and separation that she turns inward and avoids letting anyone else really matter to her. Her ‘goodbyes’ don’t hurt because her ‘hellos’ don’t matter.
The Ascension of the Lord is one of the big goodbyes - the biggest, I suppose, in all of history. Put yourself in the Apostles’ place. It’s been a few years since the day they left everything to follow him. They’ve had mind-blowing experiences: they’ve seen him walk on water, feed thousands with a few loaves and fish, they’ve seen blind men cured and lame men walking because he commanded it. They’ve seen healings and wonders and even the raising of the dead. But it isn’t all about - maybe it isn’t even mostly about - the extraordinary moments. It’s also about all that time of shared life, all those conversations on the road, the meals and all the closeness that develops among friends who share everything. They lose him, put to death horribly. He comes back to them, risen and glorified, but the same Jesus they know.
Now he’s leaving again, and this time for good.
I would expect this to be a painful moment for the Apostles, but spare a thought also for us, for you and I and all the other Christians of the last twenty centuries. We missed Him. We never got to walk side by side down a dusty Galilean road. We’re asked to believe in Him but we’ve never seen Him walking across the stormy water. We’re asked to live in conversation with Him but we’ve never heard His voice. To me, the biggest and most surprising aspect of the Ascension is that He didn’t have to do it. He could have stayed. It was in His power; nothing is beyond Him. He could still be here, in that same bodily way. You could take a pilgrimage to see Him. Maybe He would visit around the world like the Pope does. Belief would be so easy, you’d figure, with Him around doing miracles and teaching. Well, I don’t know how exactly things would be, but let your own imagination run with it sometime. What I do know is that He could have stayed.
But He chose to go, and on that hilltop they said goodbye. Based on their personal friendship, but also based on the presence that was departing from the world, this might be chosen as the most tragic moment in history. The worst goodbye of all.
Luke tells us just the opposite. He says that they went away rejoicing. That tells us, already, that something is at work beyond the goodbyes we know so well. How can they rejoice? Even if they believe they’ll see Him again someday, how can they be rejoicing to have watched Him go?
Pope Francis took up this question and answered: that “with the gaze of faith they understand that although he has been removed from their sight, Jesus stays with them for ever, he does not abandon them and in the glory of the Father supports them, guides them and intercedes for them.”
The Ascension is not Jesus departing from the world and leaving us alone. The Apostles rejoice because they know that He is now not less present, but more! No longer located in a particular place on Earth at a particular time, no longer with us in the way you and I can be physically together, but with us ever so much more closely, with a closeness that only God can have to us.
That’s why the disciples left the Ascension full of joy. If you take some time to think about this, perhaps in prayerful meditation, you’ll find extraordinary comfort as you become more and more aware of Christ with you in each moment. You’ll also find a great challenge, because the flip-side of this is that it’s our mission, now, to continue His life and work in the world.
I’ll close with another passage from the Holy Father:
“Dear brothers and sisters, the Ascension does not point to Jesus’ absence, but tells us that he is alive in our midst in a new way. He is no longer in a specific place in the world as he was before the Ascension. He is now in the lordship of God, present in every space and time, close to each one of us. In our life we are never alone: we have this Advocate who awaits us, who defends us. We are never alone: the Crucified and Risen Lord guides us. We have with us a multitude of brothers and sisters who, in silence and concealment, in their family life and at work, in their problems and hardships, in their joys and hopes, live faith daily and together with us bring the world the lordship of God’s love, in the Risen Jesus Christ, ascended into Heaven.”
Comments
Post a Comment