It is Expedient that Jesus Ascend

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE SIXTH WEEK OF EASTER (C)
12 MAY 2010

Acts 17: 15, 22 - 18:1

[Acts 17:15] After Paul's escorts had taken him to Athens, they came away with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.
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[Acts 17:22] Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said: "You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.
[Acts 17:23] For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, 'To an Unknown God.' What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.
[Acts 17:24] The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands,
[Acts 17:25] nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.
[Acts 17:26] He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions,
[Acts 17:27] so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us.
[Acts 17:28] For 'In him we live and move and have our being,' as even some of your poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
[Acts 17:29] Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.
[Acts 17:30] God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent
[Acts 17:31] because he has established a day on which he will 'judge the world with justice' through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead."
[Acts 17:32] When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, "We should like to hear you on this some other time."
[Acts 17:33] And so Paul left them.
[Acts 17:34] But some did join him, and became believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them,
[Acts 18:1] After this he left Athens and went to Corinth.

John 16: 12 - 15

[John 16:12] "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
[John 16:13] But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming.
[John 16:14] He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
[John 16:15] Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.





While Jesus was on earth during the forty days between His resurrection and ascension, He told His apostles, “it is expedient for you that I depart..” Having rejoiced at the resurrection of Our Lord, the apostles must surely have been saddened by this.

But suppose Jesus had not ascended, but had remained on earth? Strangely, He would have been less accessible to each of us than He is now. Christians would long to make the “grand pilgrimage” to the Holy Land to be in the presence of Jesus Christ: body, blood, soul, and divinity. Some Christians would in fact have the means to make that pilgrimage at least once in their lives. Many others would not.

Reflecting on this makes it easier to understand why Jesus stated that it was “expedient for Him to depart”. His departure meant opening the way for the descent of the Holly Spirit on the Church at the first Pentecost, and His abiding presence in the Church all the way until the end of time. By the power of the Holy Spirit active in the Christian priesthood, Our Lord today is fully present: body, blood, soul, and divinity in each of the tabernacles in Churches throughout the entire world. No pilgrimage is necessary: His accessibility is precisely the accessibility of the nearest Catholic Church (Western or Eastern).

I had the privilege of traveling to Jerusalem in 1994. During my stay there, I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher the (historically) most sacred place in Christianity. What struck me the most as I visited the last five original stations of the cross, was the fact that I was just as close to Jesus Christ in both His divinity and in His humanity as I was back at St Thomas the Apostle in Ann Arbor.

During the final forty days of Jesus’ historical presence on earth, He finalized the details of establishing His Church, His mystical body. Just as He constructed the body of Adam out of the elements of the earth, and vivified it by the breath (ruah) of life, so did He then vivify His mystical body on earth by ascending into heaven and sending forth His Spirit. We thus speak of the Holy Spirit as mystically being the “soul” of the mystical body of Christ, the Church. In today’s Gospel, Our Lord states the following:

[John 16:13] But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.

The Holy Spirit is the invisible head of the church--He continues elucidating the truth over the course of millennia. The truth itself is of course unchanging, but our knowledge of that truth continues to undergo development, especially with regard to the applicability of that truth within any given century’s moral milieu. For example, the Church’s teachings prohibiting in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research only emerged in the twentieth century, because before that these things were nonexistent.

Truth is unchangeable...our knowledge of it undergoes change. Protons and neutrons certainly existed in 29 AD, the year of the first Pentecost. However,our knowledge of these building blocks of nature only began to emerge around the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Holy Spirit is teacher and vivifier of the Church, the mystical Body of Christ. He also brings sanctifying grace, in the form of His seven sanctifying gifts, to each baptized Christian. He is almighty God, along with the Father and the Son, and is therefore deserving of latria, that profound adoration that is due God alone. As Pentecost approaches, we should renew devotion to the Holy Spirit. One recommendation is the “Holy Spirit Prayer Book”, by Father Lovasik.

Let us now together recite the prayer to the Holy Spirit:

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of Your love.
Send forth Your Spirit and they shall be created .O God, Who did instruct the hearts of the faithful by the light of Your Spirit, grant that by the same Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in His heavenly consolation--through Christ Our Lord. Amen.