May 24, 2020

Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension

“Will Angels Get to Taste Nonna’s Gravy?

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio

Prosper of Aquitaine is not a saint who enjoys wide appeal, like St. Anthony or St. Rita of Cascia whose feast we celebrated Friday. Yet he has left us four Latin words that have endured fifteen hundred years: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi. They mean, “The law of praying is the law of believing,” which is to say, what we believe as Catholics is articulated in our prayer and worship. There are lessons to be found in every liturgy and feast we celebrate. Let me take just one from the Feast of the Lord’s Ascension. It is a lesson about our hope, about our life beyond this earth.
 
After his Resurrection Our Lord was not in the regular company of his disciples as he was during his public ministry. He appeared to them ten times over the course of forty days. I think they would have desired and even expected that life would return to the way it was.
 
Why only these periodic encounters? St. Thomas Aquinas, tackling this question, explained that in order to reveal the glory of his Resurrection, Jesus did not want to live with them constantly as he had done before, lest the apostles think that he rose to the same life as before. St. Thomas quotes St. Bede the Venerable saying that the Lord “had risen in the same flesh but was not in the same state of mortality as they.”
 
Life could never be the same. The disciples needed to grasp a new reality, the Lord’s risen glory. It was a heavenly glory and it was to heaven that Jesus would return to prepare a place for us where a new, different, and eternal life begins for us.
 
Because this life is beyond our understanding, we tend to describe it in earthly terms. At funerals I hear about the deceased, now playing a perfect game of golf, or Nonna cooking her superb Sunday sauce or gravy for expectant angels [in Trenton, it’s “gravy,”] or Uncle Joe, an avid gambler enjoying an eternal poker game in the sky.
 
Such images can be consoling but they do heaven no justice. Beyond this life there is no “space” or “place” in the sense that we ordinarily understand these words.
 
While Judgment, Purgatory and Hell are realities that lay beyond this life, the Lord’s Ascension points us to the glory that the Lord desires for us. Theologians call it the “beatific vision.” But it is not merely a vision of God but a union with God. I like very much the way Fr. Leo Trese describes it in his book, The Faith Explained:
 

As the soul enters heaven, the impact upon it of the Infinite Love that is God would be so shattering as to annihilate the soul, if God himself did not give to the soul the strength it needs to endure the happiness that is God...It is a happiness, too, that nothing can take from us…There are other…joys that will be ours. There will be our joy in the company of our glorified Savior Jesus and of our Mother Mary….the angels and the saints, including our own family members and friends who preceded or who followed us to heaven. But these joys will be only the tinkling of little bells compared to the crashing symphony of God’s love that beats upon us.” [p.185] But perhaps St. Paul expressed it best: “Eye has seen, ear has not heard, nor has it even entered into the mind of man, what things God has prepared for those who love him.” [1 Cor 2:9]

 
As we celebrate the Lord’s Ascension, let us ask him to increase our hope. The Lord has not abandoned us. He prepares a place for us. Seated at the Father’s right hand he intercedes for us. He has sent the Holy Spirit to inspire and guide us so that we can come to share the life he wants for us—not a continuation of the life we now know, but one beyond all our imagining. St. Teresa of Calcutta reminded us: “The most beautiful is yet to come, the greatest things have yet to be accomplished. We cannot imagine what God, in his infinite love will bring about for his children. We can only stammer thinking about the beauty of a new heavens and a new earth.” That is just one of the lessons we take from this great solemnity.