Ascension - Year B

Today we celebrate the feast of the Ascension of the Lord. Jesus, who rose from the dead as the conqueror of sin and death is now returning to the glory that was His from all eternity.  With the mystery of our salvation having come full circle, it may seem like the end of the story.  However, and as today’s feast reminds us, it is the beginning of a new chapter in the story of our salvation.

God’s willingness to be personally and fully involved with the world is shown in the incarnation of Jesus, in mandating the continuance of his mission, Jesus required a similarly incarnational involvement from his followers.  “Go”, says Jesus, in today’s gospel (Mk 16:15-20) “into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation”.  In today’s second reading, (Eph. 4:1-13) Paul reminds us that ours is a mission intended to fill the universe in all its parts.  Therefore, when the question of the two white-clad men is repeated in our hearing today, (“Why do you stand here looking up at the skies” Acts 1:11), that question should serve as an impetus toward: (1) helping us to shed the urge for un-involvement;(2) avoiding a wait-and-see attitude, and (3) in compelling our direct and devoted incarnational involvement with the world.  We live now “between-the-times”, i.e., between the first and final coming of Jesus. We can call it “church-time”; this is the time of salt-and-light-involvement with the work of Christ in the world.

In celebrating the ascension of Jesus today, we are not celebrating the completion of His mission, but the continuance of our own.  As first established by Jesus, ours is a mission of salvation that has been affirmed as existential, i.e., of this world, and eschatological, i.e. of the world to come.  Existentially, salvation involves justice, i.e., actions geared toward the reform of the oppressive forces and structures in society; eschatologically, salvation is also geared toward the permanent union of humankind with God.  Since salvation is liberation, the feast of ascension should inspire us to involve ourselves in the problems of the needy.