[stephenkhoo]

09 May 2013, Thursday, The Ascension of the Lord
THE EXALTED CHRIST AS THE BASIS OF HOPE FOR THE PILGRIM CHURCH
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 1:1-11; EPH 4:1-3; LK 24:46-53

“Lord, has the time come? Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” We too are seeking for the Kingdom as well. To the extent, we quest for meaning and purpose in life; to that extent we seek for liberation from our sufferings, miseries and the prisons we create for ourselves, we are awaiting for the kingdom of love, justice and peace to arrive. Like the Jews, we too have to endure the apparent hopeless situations in our lives. Like them too, it is only natural to ask: “When will it come?” When will we find true freedom and joy? Unfortunately, there is no answer to this question. We will never know the time of the completion of the kingdom. Indeed, this was what Jesus told His apostles, “It is not for you to know times or dates that the Father has decided by his own authority.” Nevertheless, although we do not know the time, at least we are certain of this hope of ours. We are confident that it will come. Our hope for the kingdom is not founded on some illusions or dreams. What is the basis of our hope?

The liturgy tells us that this hope is founded on the fact of Jesus’ exaltation. This is what the feast of the Ascension is celebrating. God the Father raised Him from the dead and made Him “sit at his right hand, in heaven, far above every Sovereignty, Authority, Power or Dominion, or any other name that can be named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. He has put all things under his feet, and made him, as the ruler of everything.” Where Christ is, there we will also be. It is also our hope that we will one day share in His kingdom as well. St Paul tells us that this is our hope which His call holds for us. It is the same hope of the “rich glories he has promised the saints will inherit.”

More important than when the kingdom will come, is to know how it will come so that we can prepare ourselves for it. One thing we must not do is to sit by idly gazing into the sky, hoping for God to intervene in this world from on high! That was what the apostles were doing. Indeed, we are just like the apostles. There is a tendency that when we are dealing with difficult matters, we hope that such matters can be settled through some divine intervention without any effort on our part. In the face of trials, difficulties or challenges, we want to shirk our responsibilities. Instead of tackling our problems head-on, we rationalize, speculate and intellectualize about what could have been, just as the apostles did.

The truth is that we need to collaborate with the Lord in bringing this kingdom to reality. The Lord will not work without us. He will work within our freedom, not outside or alongside our freedom. Why should that be the case? This is because the kingdom of God is not to be found somewhere up in the sky or beyond the clouds but wherever we are for we are told that “Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there.” In other words, God’s kingdom is already found here, or more precisely, in our hearts. It will be in our lives, in our earth; in our being that we will experience the kingdom. Thus, we should not be gazing upwards or daydreaming that He will bring us to heaven. On the contrary, Christ will bring heaven to earth! Hence, we are called to gaze into the world and forward into history.

So if His kingdom were to be realized on this earth, then we must respond to the call for conversion. To live the kingdom life, there is no way we can bypass and dispense with true conversion and transformation of our lives. Instead, we are called to transform human society with all its distorted values and inauthentic relationships. Salvation is to proclaim God and His unconditional love in a world where people are hurt, homeless and jobless. This is what the scripture says, “In his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations.” In a world of selfish and self-centered love, we are called to proclaim that God has forgiven us unconditionally and that we are called to share in His love, life and in His kingdom. We are called to transcend the world at the same time. We must give hope, and transcendent and lasting values to the world. We must rise above the materialistic and selfish values of the world and look to heaven so that, like Christ, we too will put everything under our feet and make God the Lord of our lives, of the world and the whole creation. This is the real meaning of the exaltation.

In order to make this proclamation effective, we must begin with ourselves, our families, our workplace, our parish and the society we are in before we extend to the whole world. We are called to reach out and build the kingdom of God by our lives. We are called to be the signs of His presence. Our lives must be the gospel from which people can read. This is precisely what Jesus meant when He told His disciples that if they were to share in this hope, they must be His witnesses. But be witnesses of what? To His passion, death and resurrection! This is what Jesus told His disciples in the gospel. “You see how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations … you are witnesses to this.”

Through our sufferings and hardships in life, we are called to die to our selfishness daily so that the resurrected life of Jesus would radiate from us. It is not sufficient to die to self but it is also important that we live the resurrected life as well. Only in this way, can we make His presence felt on this earth. With the ascension of Jesus, we are now called to be His witnesses, that is, the sacrament of His risen presence both as individuals and as Church, His body in the world.

Of course, the desire to die to ourselves so that His resurrected life can be in us is, humanly speaking, an impossible task because of our human weakness and frailty. But the good news of today’s liturgy is that with the Ascension of Jesus, it does not mean we now have to rely on ourselves. We can rely on Jesus. So if the angels told the disciples, “this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there”, it was because He would come back to this earth to be with us forever. So, the departure of Jesus is not an absence but a real presence in a new and all-encompassing way. Only then could He say, “I will be with you forever until the end of time.”

More importantly, with His presence, the power of the Risen Christ is bestowed on us as well. At the resurrection, He received new life but at the Ascension, He was given power to bestow life as well. Being bestowed with the powers of God, Jesus can now in turn exercise His power in us believers. This promise, as Paul tells us, holds true because we “can tell from the strength of his power at work in Christ, when he used it to raise him from the dead and make him sit at his right hand, in heaven, far above every sovereignty.” Thus, when we proclaim the kingdom, we do it by His power. Yes, through Christ, we can conquer sins, die to ourselves so that His living presence can be in us. In the final analysis, the proclamation of the Kingdom is not the work of man but the work of God in and through man.

But how can this be possible? Through the power of the Holy Spirit given to us by Jesus as promised by the Father! Only in the Holy Spirit can the Risen Lord live in us and empower us from within. Thus Jesus instructed His disciples, “John baptized with water but you, not many days from now, will be baptized with the Holy Spirit … you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and then you will be my witnesses.” Consequently, without that power of the Spirit of the Risen Christ in us, we cannot be His witnesses. Hence, Jesus enjoined the disciples with the reminder, “Stay in the city then, until you are clothed with the power from on high” because He is sending down to them what the Father has promised.

So it is through the Holy Spirit that we will experience the abiding presence of the Risen Lord. Until that happens, we must therefore stay in Jerusalem to watch and pray like the apostles. Following the apostles who “went back to Jerusalem” and “continually in the Temple praising God”, we too await the celebration of Pentecost, the coming of Christ back to this earth in a new way through prayerful reflection, meditation and prayers. We must make ourselves docile to His coming so that we can be filled with His Holy Spirit and become His true and powerful witnesses to the Kingdom and most of all to His Presence in our lives. Receiving His Spirit is the way to experience His abiding presence in our lives so that we no longer have to live like orphans and abandoned children but in peace and assurance. Truly, when we read His word, break His bread, gather to pray and worship in His name, especially with the Church, the body of Christ, we will certainly experience His presence, support and consolation. And like the apostles in the gospel who went back full of joy, we too will also be seen as people full of joy because the Risen Christ lives in us.

Written by Coadjutor Archbishop, William Goh
Spiritual Director, Catholic Spirituality Centre (CSC)
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