Homily for Ascension 2010

One of the areas that were cut in the recent federal budget was some of the funding for family counselling and other family services. Does this mean there will be more demand on voluntary support for families? We are fortunate to have free counselling offered in our parish each week. Thanks to Jan Imarisio for that. But it will make it more difficult for Catholic Centrecare services who also offer counselling here. Only last week we renewed our agreement,with the help of the two schools St John's and St Joseph's, to continue to support Cenrecare counselling in the Parish.

I was thinking of this when reflecting on two young people who were unable to decide whether to get married or not. They had lived together for several years but had not resolved some personal and family issues. In some ways they are typical of their generation where there are no expectations and little thought of the consequences of their choices. The initial discovery that they love one another did not result inevitably in a lasting commitment as it may have in days gone by. So often it seems like people are swimming in a sea of conflicting emotions unable to reach the shore.

There have been endless discussions about the lifestyle choices of baby boomers and their offspring generations X, Y and Z. Maybe Jessica Watson's epic voyage is a parable of the independent choices young people are making. It is evidence of how dramatically our society and family life and the role of women has changed over the last fifty years. Who knows what will come in the future.

Whatever happens, many today are unable to see that loving as Jesus loved is a great joy and truly good news. For people to realise that they need to see it in us who confess our faith in Jesus.

The two accounts of the Ascension we hear today, one from the Acts of the Apostles, the other from the Gospel of Luke, raise questions of intimacy and love. I wonder as I hear these accounts, how did those disciples come to befriend Jesus as they did? For them it was not plain sailing by any means. But the very difficult and sometimes painful problems they came up against as they travelled around Galilee with Jesus did enable they and Jesus to break down barriers of pride, ambition, selfishness, so they were able to make a real commitment to him. Again not one without problems and pain.

Those problems and pain reached their climax as they witnessed their friend Jesus suffer and die. Then they had to face their own weakness and betrayal.

This partly explains why the Ascension of Jesus is important. Jesus was not just some acquaintance they could take or leave. His leaving was a watershed in their lives. He had tried to prepare them for his departure saying he would not leave them orphans. Yet, even so, the loss was real. On the other hand their joy was real, too, as Luke tells us, "they went back to Jerusalem full of joy." How could that be? How could it be a happy situation?

St Augustine explains it this way: "He did not leave heaven when he came down to us from heaven; and he did not leave us when he ascended to heaven again." There is a unity in the Body of Christ that is not broken either by death or departure of any kind. And again Augustine says, "Just as he ascended without leaving us, so too we are already with him in heaven, although his promises have not yet been fulfilled in our bodies" (cf Augustine, Sermon on the Ascension #98). How wonderful is that!

In Ascending to his Father, Jesus has taken our human nature into the divine life of God. He takes to God not just our good days and our easy prayers. Jesus takes with him our pain, our struggles, our failures, our difficult prayers and our death as well. Nothing is beyond God's sight nor beyond God's care. There is nothing human in us that is rejected. Rather, in taking us to God we are transformed. Our sorrows becomes joy, our mourning becomes laughter, our cry for justice is satisfied, our death becomes life. It is the Holy Spirit who does it.

So we do not sit in judgement on those around us who seem to us to be lost. Instead we offer them the hope that is within us. We become, in fact, Christ being given for the world day by day.

Jessica Watson has been transformed in many minds from a stubborn teenager into a national hero. I wonder how much it has changed her? Such a personal feat as she has accomplished is an inspiration to everyone in spite of reservations about age.

In a similar kind of way Jesus had to leave his friends in order that they leave behind their inadequate understanding of Jesus and his mission and to be changed themselves.

I am tempted to despair sometimes by the endless problems that beset us, be it the unstoppable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or the crime on the streets or the depths of poverty and financial despair engulfing many. But when, on a still, cool, autumn morning I see the mist drifting through the valleys of Nambour, I know, that in Jesus, all things are made new.

Fr Graham