Journeying Into Mystery

The Ascension of Jesus (Rembrandt)

Today we honor Mary, the Blessed Mother of God, as at the same time, we honor all women who live out their vocation as mothers not only to their children, but to all for whom they care. And over all of this we celebrate the Solemnity of our Lord ascending into heaven.

Jesus ascended into heaven body and soul. It was something he had to do to fulfill his mission. As long as he was on earth and inhabited a human body, he, like all of us, could only be in one place at one time. He ascended into heaven so that he could be everywhere at one time, through you and through me. We who have been baptized into the Body of Christ, are to bring the presence of Jesus to all we know and meet in life.

In the first reading, after receiving the mandate from Jesus to witness to the gospel throughout all the world, the apostles stood staring in the sky. Two men in white, presumably angels, basically said to the apostles, “Why are you just standing around here looking at the sky? Go back to Jerusalem and get busy doing what he just told you to do.” This is a message that is one not only for the apostles, but for all of us. As disciples of Jesus, we are to be actively engaged in being a witness to Jesus in our own part of the world.

Being a witness to Jesus implies that we live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As St. Francis of Assisi told his followers, “preach the Gospel at all times, and, if necessary, use words.” The way we live out the gospel in our lives is a more powerful witness to Jesus, than what we say. There is an old Italian story about a young mother that perhaps illustrates this the best.

Long ago, Italians believed that Jesus and St. Peter would often visit the earth, often disguised as two poor men making a pilgrimage to a shrine. They did this to see how well people were carrying on the Jesus’ command to continue to give witness to the gospel. In one story, Jesus and St. Peter, dressed in tattered, weather-beaten clothes walk into a small Italian town.

They see a big, beautiful home with lovely flower gardens, and a well-manicured lawn and decide to stop there and ask for food and shelter. The woman of the house, who was very well-to-do, answered the door and looked very suspiciously at the two ragged men standing at her door. Jesus told her, “Good lady, my companion and I are on a pilgrimage to a shrine. We are wondering if you could give us a little food and perhaps a place in the stable in which we might sleep tonight.” She replied rather sternly, “I cannot help you. However, there is a family across the road who might be able to assist you.” Then, she slammed the door in their faces.

Jesus and St. Peter looked across the road. There was a small, little house that was in need of repair. It was very obviously the home of someone who was poor. So they crossed the road and knocked on the door. A young woman, who had a baby in her arms and three small children hanging on her patched dress, opened the door.

Jesus said to her, “Good woman, my companion and I are on pilgrimage to a shrine. We are wondering if you could give us a little food and perhaps a place in the shed in which we might sleep tonight.” She replied, “My husband and I do not have much, but what we have is yours. Please come in and make yourselves comfortable from your journey.” She sat them down in front of the hearth as she got busy making supper and looking after the needs of her children. When her husband got home from work, she invited Jesus and St. Peter to the table for a shared meal, meager as it was. Following supper, the woman and her husband cleaned up the dishes, and got the children ready for bed.

Jesus and St. Peter got up and Jesus said, “My companion and I will go out to the shed in back so that you and your husband can get some rest.” She replied, “Nonsense! I will not have you sleeping with the chickens. I insist you sleep here in our house.” She went and got a couple of pillows and blankets and set up a space near the hearth for Jesus and St. Peter to sleep so that they could be warm through the night. Then she and her husband went to bed.

Early the next morning the woman arose, prepared a little breakfast for her husband, her children, and Jesus and St. Peter. As Jesus and St. Peter were getting ready to leave, she pressed into their hands some bread, a little cheese and two flagons of water. “This is food for the long journey you will make today. May God bless you!”

Jesus looked at her with great kindness and love. He told her, “Though we may look like poor pilgrims, I am Jesus, and this man is St. Peter. You have treated us with great kindness and generosity. In thanksgiving, I give you this one gift. After we leave today, the first thing you do today, you will do very well throughout the rest of the day.” Then they left.

The young woman thought, “I have much wool that needs to be spun into thread. So she got her spinning wheel and the raw wool she had. She sat down at her spinning wheel and spun thread throughout the day so well, that by the end of the day she had an overabundance of thread by which she could make clothes for her family.

The rich woman who lived across the street came over to the poor woman’s house and asked about the two strangers who stayed the night. The young woman told her how the two men were really Jesus and St. Peter, and how they blessed her so that she could spin all this wool into thread. The rich woman, jealous of the blessing given to the young woman, said to her, “If ever they come back through town looking for lodging, send them to me.” The young woman said that she would.

Jesus and St. Peter made a return trip through the town and immediately went to the young woman’s house. She welcomed them with great joy and told them, “The woman who lives across the street regrets that she treated you so poorly. While you are very welcome to stay here, might you give her a second chance?” Jesus said that he would. St. Peter said to Jesus as they crossed the street, “You know this rich woman is only going to welcome us for the blessing you will give her when we leave.” Jesus replied, “Her true intentions will reveal whether she will receive a blessing or a curse.”

The rich woman welcomed them with open arms. She treated them well and prepared for them a great feast. They then slept on featherbeds next to a warm fire throughout the night. As they prepared to leave, Jesus said to her, ““Though we may look like poor pilgrims, I am Jesus, and this man is St. Peter. You have treated us with great kindness and generosity. In thanksgiving, I give you this one gift. After we leave today, the first thing after we leave, you will do very well throughout the rest of the day.” Then they left.

The rich woman got out her spinning wheel and all her raw wool and said to herself, “I am going to spin even more wool than did that poor woman across the street. But first, I better go to the bathroom.”  And, it was in the bathroom that the rich woman spent the rest of the day.

The young woman gave witness to Jesus in the way she cared for the strangers at her door. On this feast of the Ascension, we give thanks for the many ways our Blessed Mother and our mothers have given witness to Jesus, not so much by what they have said but on how well they have lived the gospel in acts of love for us and others. May we, in turn, emulate the example of the Blessed Mother and our mothers, by giving witness and preach Jesus in the way we live out our faith in acts of love.

For the first part of my childhood, my family lived in Chicago. It was always an exciting time for my brother and sister and I when our parents would take us to downtown Chicago, especially during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Marshall Fields was a huge department store filled with all sorts of exotic sights and smells. I would suppose for most who are young, the experience I had of Marshall Fields department store would be like going to the Mall of America for the very first time. There was so much to see and so much of it just filled a kid like me with wonder. The overwhelming scents coming from the perfume counter area alone could nearly knock a person out. However, for a five year old kid, the best part of that department store at Christmas was the vast area devoted only to toys.

The toy section consisted of aisles upon aisles of toys of all kinds. A kid could wander the toy section of the store for several hours and never see the entirety of what was displayed there. I remember as a five year old kid being mesmerized by all that was on display. After being in the toy section for a while, my mother told me it was time to leave and follow her and go look for clothes. Ugh! There is nothing more boring in the world for a 5 year old kid than to go shopping for clothes. I heard my mother’s voice, but the Siren’s call of the toys was stronger. They called out to me, “Come back, come back!” I made like I was following my mother, and then circled back into the toy section.

After some time had passed, I thought I had better go and find my mother. What I had not counted on in my great plan was that in a store as big and vast as Marshall Fields filled with busy Christmas shoppers, all who were at least 2 or 3 feet taller than I, trying to find my mother in that huge crowd was going to be impossible. I wandered around calling for my mother. “Mom, where are you?” I called out. It hadn’t occurred to me that there was more than one woman who answered to the name, “Mom.” I couldn’t see her anywhere and I was getting very scared. I was lost in a huge store, in a huge city, surrounded by grownups, and had no way of knowing how I was ever going to get home to my family.

What I didn’t know was my mother missed me right away and knew exactly where I was. She decided that a good lesson in obedience needed to be taught, and withdrew from me, keeping me in eyesight, but letting me sweat out my huge mistake. When I was on the verge of panic, she finally answered my call, and I ran to her. I was so very grateful and hugged her waist tightly (remember I was a little kid, then). For the rest of the day I was so close to her, you would swear I was stuck to her with super glue.

On any given day, we listen to many voices. Do we pay attention to the voice of the Good Shepherd who calls out to us? In that department store many years ago, instead of listening to my mother, I chose to listen to the voices of all those toys beckoning to me. The sight and the sounds of all those toys bedazzled me luring me further and further from my mother to the point that I became completely lost, alone in a vast crowd of people, and scared to death. Just as I ignored the voice of my mother telling me to follow her in that department store, do we tend to shut out the voice of the Good Shepherd and follow other voices? And at those times when we do so, do we also find ourselves lost and scared?

There are many voices in the world luring us away from Jesus. There is the vast wasteland of imagined wealth that beckons to us, promising us riches and fame and security. There are those who hold themselves up as political Messiahs making all sorts of promises, promises based on nothing but air, with no guarantee of fulfillment. There are the voices of self-gratification, promising to titillate all of our senses, all of it just another fantasy among many, and no more. All of these voices invade our lives through television commercials, radio, emails, the vast world wide web, all telling us what to do and how to live. Where is the Good Shepherd amidst all of this noise, this cacophony of sound?

Like a mother keeping an eye on her lost, disobedient son, Jesus is always near, ready to call out and save us as we get lost. In the midst of the chaos and panic of our lives, Jesus calls for us to just turn around. As we do so, we find that he has been there all along just waiting for us to find him. All we can do then is to embrace him in gratitude, and be thankful to be safe and sound once more.

Jesus is the only sure thing in our lives, the only sure thing on which we can count. The rest of the world is just all smoke and mirrors and nothing more. Just as a mother loves her children to death and never abandons them, so Jesus does not abandon us even if we abandon him, for we are precious in the heart of our loving God. It is the hand of God who created us in love and shaped us, and who has given us to the care of the beloved, Jesus, who is the Son of God, the Good Shepherd. As the beloved of our God, Jesus offers us more than what the world can offer us. Jesus gives to us eternal life and happiness. All we need to do is to listen to his voice and follow him.

Painting: Christ of St. John of the Cross (Salvador Dali)

Several Sundays ago while I was assisting Fr. Kevin at Mass, a little girl of 4 or 5 years of age and her dad approached me as I distributed Holy Communion. The little girl had her arms folded over her chest wanting a blessing. I extended my left hand over her and said, “May God bless you and keep you!” She looked at my extended hand and then in a joyful gesture, giggled and high fived me, slapping my hand, saying, “Alright!” At first, I was startled and then amused, as was her dad. I thought to myself, “If only all people approached Holy Communion with the same joy and excitement as this little girl!”

In all of the scripture readings for today we hear similar expressions of joy. In the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles left the Sanhedrin, “rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name [of Jesus].”  In Revelations, we hear all living creatures and the elders joyfully crying out, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing.”  In the John’s Gospel account, the disciple rejoiced when they recognized the risen Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. Then the Gospel writer tells us that Jesus takes Peter aside and says to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Then the Gospel writer concludes, “Jesus said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.’” 

In all of these readings there is an association of unbridled joy to suffering and death. Joy is not the normal emotional state we generally associate with suffering and death. In the Gospel, Jesus talks about Peter glorifying God by dying. How is there any glory in dying? We usually associate misery, pain and grieving to suffering and death but not joy.

Each and every one of us has experienced some kind of suffering in our lives. Our suffering may be physical from an illness or some kind of injury. The death of a loved one, the broken relationships that occur in divorce, the breaking off of a long term romantic relationship or a friendship with someone significant, depression, the loss of employment or of a home can bring upon us great emotional and spiritual pain and suffering. But why do the scripture writers insist on associating joy with suffering?

Ordinarily, I think we would all think a person rather sadistic who would find joy in all this kind of suffering. The difficulty we encounter in suffering is that we can get so stuck in our suffering, that we dwell in it and make it an end unto itself. We wonder why God is punishing us.  What have we done that God is punishing us with such suffering? What the scriptures tell us today is that human suffering is not permanent, rather it is temporary,  a process through which we must pass in order to find true and complete joy. This is what the Paschal Mystery of Jesus teaches us.

In order for the joy in the Resurrection to occur, Jesus had to first experience being betrayed and abandoned by his most trusted followers, tortured, beaten and executed. Jesus had to pass through his passion and death in order to experience the joy of the Resurrection. You and I would not have the joy of receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion had not Jesus first suffered and died, then rose from the dead. We reap the benefits of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection every time we receive Holy Communion. 

We find meaning and purpose to our human suffering in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes that In our baptism we have been united to Jesus and have suffered and died with him. However, we also have been resurrected with him. Our union with Jesus is so intimate and close that in our own suffering we share in his suffering. In our sharing of his suffering, our suffering takes on the redemptive quality of his. As Jesus had to pass through his suffering to reach the resurrection, our suffering, too, is only temporary. Our suffering is not a permanent state, but a temporary condition through which we must pass to reach our ultimate joy, our own resurrection.

When the time comes when our ultimate suffering occurs and our human bodies wear out and die, we will not remain dead. We will rise from the dead. This is why we sing following the consecration at Mass, “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death Lord Jesus, until you come again in glory.” When we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion, our suffering and our death are united to his redemptive suffering, death and resurrection, until it is no longer necessary when Jesus returns in glory.

None of us need to seek out suffering or death. These all come our way eventually. However, when we do find ourselves in the throes of suffering, let us not get stuck in it. Let us not dwell on our suffering as permanent. Rather let us look beyond the suffering we are experiencing to the joy that awaits us. When we do so, the anticipation of that joy will help sustain us.

As the apostles left the Sanhedrin in joy for having suffered for the sake of Jesus, as the Lamb who was slain received all power, riches, and glory, and as Peter would give glory to God in his own suffering and death, may we find within our own suffering the promise of God’s joy, that same joy that filled that little girl when she high fived me at communion several weeks ago.