A Homily for the Sunday after the Ascension

​+ The flame of the paschal candle burns no longer. That singular sacramental of the incredible yet tangible reality of the resurrected Lord amongst us has been extinguished, for the Risen Christ has ascended to heaven. That privileged period of His bodily presence after His resurrection in which He appeared several times to his disciples—that unique period of the super-natural formation of his closest followers—has ended with the command to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation,” because “he who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned,” as the Gospel of Ascension Day teaches.    
 
This is a life-changing command: the Gospel must be preached to the whole of creation for the sake of their eternal salvation. For if people do not believe in Christ, condemnation—damnation—awaits them. And the duty of preaching the Gospel falls to us. The salvation or damnation of others is in our hands—each according to our particular vocation in life, to be sure, but we must nevertheless be witnesses to the Truth of the Gospel in every circumstance and be constantly zealous for the salvation of souls. The Lord demands nothing less from each of us, and we must each examine our conscience in respect of it, be we in the cloister, in the world as a cleric, religious or lay man or woman, or be we at the point of considering our vocation in this life.
 
In 1927 Pope Pius XI declared Saint Therese of Lisieux, who never left the cloister, the patron saint of missionaries because of the efficacy of her prayers and sacrifices for those who actively went abroad to preach the Gospel. Those prayers and sacrifices are equally necessary today for those who must bear witness to the Gospel in the ‘home missions’, as it were—in the family, in the workplace, in the educational and social milieu and in the political order. If the light of the Gospel does not shine in each of these places, which are increasingly overshadowed by the all-pervading demons of relativism and syncretism, souls will be lost and condemned for eternity. It is our duty to confront this eclipse of the truth and to bring people to the light of Christ in any and every way we can.
 
In the world in which we live, this is a daunting task. There are even those in the Church hierarchy who would recoil from this command of Christ and who, infested with the demon that masquerades under the name of “dialogue,” rebuke those who seek to implement it by seeking to convert people. Let us pray that such people hear the Gospel and are themselves converted! Our duty is clear, even if it seems utterly beyond our powers or abilities.
 
But it was also beyond the powers and abilities of the apostles, who were in fact fewer in number than are those who believe in Christ today. And yet we owe to them and to their missionary endeavors the faith that has been handed on from them and that we have received. Few as they were, and as weak and sinful as they may have been, they believed. Their faith in Jesus Christ, risen victoriously from the dead conquering sin and death, the definitive revelation of God in human history, was that which was necessary for God to work in them and through them so that the Gospel would be preached to every creature—ourselves included!—and that His Church would be built up on earth as the instrument, indeed the sacrament, of salvation for all.
 
For the apostles were not alone. Whilst the Lord had left them at His Ascension, the gift of the Holy Spirit, which he promises in the Gospel of this Holy Mass, filled them and transformed them into His witnesses. They partook in the very wisdom, knowledge, understanding, fortitude, counsel, piety and awe that comes from God Himself. And thus strengthened, they worked tirelessly, offering their very lives in seeking faithfully to comply with Christ’s missionary command. We are both the beneficiaries and inheritors of their sacrificial zeal. They are saved; they have received the crown of life. We must persevere in faithful witness to Christ in order to join them.
 
Our Lord warned the apostles that in faithfully witnessing to Him: “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.” We should not be surprised at this. The martyrdom of Christians is rarer today than it once was, but it continues, even if in the West it is more often in the form of the slaying of Christians on the altar of the gods of the most recent politically expedient ideologies. Being put out of one’s place of worship continues also. Incredibly, in our day some successors of the apostles themselves administratively eject faithful Catholics from parish churches the world over for the so-called ‘crime’ of worshiping according to the ancient rites, and they do so with a zeal that is itself as politically positivist as it is not of God. As the Gospel this morning underlines: “They have no knowledge of the Father.”
 
The flame of the paschal candle has indeed been extinguished. But we are promised the fire of God the Holy Spirit to transform us and to sustain us no matter what the world—or men of the Church—throw at us. As we approach His altar this morning let us ask for the grace humbly, worthily and efficaciously to receive His gifts anew in the great feast of Pentecost that is to come. For “he who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” +