Feast of the Ascension

 We hear, in one of the prefaces to this feast, that: "Mediator between God and  man, judge of the world and Lord of hosts, he ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before." Thus, as members of Christ's body, we are permanently joined to our head. Christ remains present to us, especially in the Eucharist, yet we await the fullness of time when we will be united with him. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples: "And if I go to prepare  place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also." (Jn 14: 3) This pledge of the Lord gives us both strength and consolation. He has not abandoned us by ascending to the Father rather his gift of the Holy Spirit, which we will celebrate next Sunday at Pentecost, means that his life and power are more present to us now than they were while he was limited bodily during his earthly ministry. As Christians our life is now not oriented towards this present reality but to that where Christ has ascended: "As was the man of dust so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven." (1 Cor 15: 48-49) Thus, even as we continue to live our life on earth with all of its struggles and suffering through faith we are conformed to Jesus Christ who has gone on ahead of us to our ultimate destination: "But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." (Rm 6: 8-11)