A Homily for the Sunday after the Ascension

+ “I have said all this to you to keep you from falling away.  They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.”

These stark words of Our Lord, warning his disciples of what the future held for them, are addressed to us this morning in this period after the Ascension, when we are left looking up into the sky, as it were, contemplating all that has happened and anticipating the Gift of the promised Paraclete, “the spirit of truth.”

And indeed, in Western Europe as well as in many other countries these words resound with a terrible truth in our times. Only last October three Catholics were slain in the Basilica of Notre Dame in Nice, not so far from us, by someone convinced he was doing what God willed. As we know only too well, this was not an isolated incident in our day. There have been many – too many – acts of violence committed against Christians in the name of God.
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“They will do this because they have not known the Father, nor me,” Our Lord continues. How utterly true! Such acts betray an profound ignorance of the nature of the One True God revealed in history, revealed definitively so in the Incarnation of His Son, Jesus Christ. That is to say that the ‘god’ inspiring such hatred and violence is not God at all. This evil comes a fallen spirit of deception and deceit, seeking to destroy all that is good and is truly of God and to sow enmity and hatred.
It essential that we avoid falling into this most insidious temptation ourselves. That evil, even extreme evil, is done to us is no excuse for hostility or xenophobia towards others. Rather, it renders the increase in charity commanded by Saint Peter in this morning’s Epistle even more imperative. And it renders the command given by Our Lord at his very Ascension to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (cf. Mk 16:15) a matter of the uttermost urgency. For if people do not know the Father, or His Incarnate Son, whose fault is it, but ours?

This may seem to be too difficult a goal to achieve in our world. Who are we in the face of such widespread evil – we, weak and sinful beings, at times utterly unworthy of the inestimable gift and noble vocation that our baptism gives us.

Doubt and fear were the lot of the original disciples too. Unworthiness also – even after the Ascension. But the promised Gift of the Paraclete, the Consoler, burnt away all that was unworthy in them, purifying them in the furnace of God’s love so that they could realise all that to which their baptism called them.

Saint Leo the Great (400-461) instructs us on the nature of this reality:
               
“This Faith, increased by the Lord’s Ascension and established by the gift of the Holy Ghost, was not terrified by bonds, imprisonments, banishments, hunger, fire, attacks by wild beasts, refined torments of cruel persecutors. For this Faith throughout the world not only men, but even women, not only beardless boys, but even tender maids, fought to the shedding of their blood. This Faith cast out spirits, drove off sicknesses, raised the dead…” (De Ascensione Domini, II)
 
Therefore, we are not to live in fear, but with the confidence of supernatural faith and hope, in the charity and prudence to which Saint Peter exhorts us. We are not to be passive ‘closet’ Christians, but faithful witnesses to the Truth of God, revealed definitively for all men in Jesus Christ. We are to be His missionaries in that part of the world in which it is given to us to walk in this life. Nothing less.
 
For an increase in faith and hope and charity; for the resolution of our own wills that is necessary to take up our missionary duty with renewed zeal and efficacy, let us ask Almighty God in this Holy Mass and throughout the coming days as the great day of Pentecost draws near. +

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