Thoughts on the Ascension of our Lord
Thoughts on the Ascension of our Lord from St. John Henry Newman
7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. John 16:7
I have long taken comfort from the ascension of our Lord Who has gone to reign from on high (Deus Ascendit not Deus Abscondit, as Will Willimon once put it). Were Jesus still physically localized (say, visiting Peoria, IL) the clamor would be such that we’d never get close to Him. With God’s presence in the Spirit, working through the Word, we can be in communion with Him anywhere and at any time.
Jesus says that His ascension is to our advantage, in order that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, might come to be with us. It’s a kind of cause and effect that had never struck me so bluntly until I read an article from St. John Henry Newman (“Mysteries in Religion”, The Catholic Thing, Monday, May 13, 2024). Along with pointing that out, Newman considers other “departures” that we have endured, often causing us to wonder “Why them?” and “Why now?”
“Moreover, this departure of Christ, and coming of the Holy Ghost, leads our minds with great comfort to the thought of many lower dispensations of Providence towards us. He, who, according to His inscrutable will, sent first His Co-equal Son, and then His Eternal Spirit, acts with deep counsel, which we may surely trust, when He sends from place to place those earthly instruments which carry on His purposes. This is a thought which is particularly soothing as regards the loss of friends; or of especially gifted men, who seem in their day the earthly support of the Church. For what we know, their removal hence is as necessary for the furtherance of the very objects we have at heart, as was the departure of our Savior. . . .”
This helps me as I consider the deaths of Lorri, Dale, Fred, Pat, John, and others dear in memory. I pray that even though the deaths of dear ones leave us bewildered as to the counsel of God this can provide a bit of comfort for you, too. For God has them in His keeping and there will be a great reunion when our Savior returns – “in the same way (we) have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).
A Long Read - but a Good Reminder. From “The Catholic Thing”
Today in Holy Week is traditionally known as “Spy Wednesday.” It recalls the day on which Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin. The Gospel of John on Monday was especially harsh in its judgment of Judas. The scene is the house of Lazarus, where Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus’ feet with costly perfumed oil. Judas is outraged:
Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples and the one who would betray him, said, “Why has this oil not been sold for three hundred days’ wages and given to the poor?” He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions.
The Gospel reading for today, from Matthew, paints an equally venal portrait of the man from Kerioth (thus his label “Iscariot”):
One of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?” They paid him 30 pieces of silver, and from that time on, he looked for an opportunity to hand him over.
Later in the same reading, Jesus says “woe to the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.” Judas piously asks, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” Jesus answers, with exquisite irony, “You have said so.”
What to make of Judas?
The Church, like any human institution, is comprised of people. And each of those people, including ourselves, is a sinner, from plumber to pope, with the sin of greed high on the popularity list. The Vatican financial scandals of the last few decades are ugly and damaging, but they’re hardly new to Church history.
Nor are they peculiar to Rome. In 2011, the chief financial officer of a major U.S. archdiocese was fired, indicted, and convicted for the theft of nearly $1 million in Church funds.
Similar examples, of various scale, abound because money is magnetic. Money means comfort. Money means power to do and get what we want. Thus it’s quite reasonable to see Judas as just another miserable thief; a pathetic, deceitful – and in this case, disastrously misguided – crook. It would also be very unwise to ignore the guilty verdict of two Apostles with direct experience of the man and the Gospel events they describe.
Yet ordinary greed doesn’t seem to satisfy as the main, or at least the only, motive for Judas’s actions. In Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 film for television, Jesus of Nazareth [1], Judas – played with superb complexity by the actor Ian MacShane – is portrayed as a fellow traveler of the extremist Zealot party. The Zealots seek to expel the Romans from Israel and restore Jewish liberty. Judas sincerely admires Jesus and his mission. He disagrees with the Zealots’ appetite for violence, but he shares their assumption that a Messiah will restore Israel as an independent kingdom.
The Hanging of Judas [2] by an unknown Alsatian or Southern German artist, c. 1520 [Art Institute of Chicago]. The devil removes the traitor’s soul.
Judas joins Christ’s disciples with genuine devotion. But his understanding of the Messiah’s purpose is rebuffed by Jesus. Disillusioned and confused, he becomes an easy victim of Zerah (Ian Holm), the satanically shrewd counselor to the Sanhedrin, who convinces him to hand over Jesus to the authorities so that Jesus can prove who He is to the “fair-minded” Jewish leadership. When Judas realizes Zerah’s treachery and its consequences, he commits suicide in a fit of hopeless self-loathing.
Mel Gibson takes a similar approach in his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. [3] Whatever his other motives, Judas (Luca Lionello) becomes the naive pawn of a jealous and vindictive Sanhedrin. Horrified by what he’s done, and contemptuously dismissed by his manipulators when he tries to undo the damage, he’s hounded by demons of despair and hangs himself. As with Zeffirelli, Gibson presents Judas not as a greedy, self-aware cynic but rather as a weak and deluded loser, a disposable tool of evil in a much larger game.
So the lessons of this and every Spy Wednesday are several, and worth considering.
First, humanity’s perennial, go-to Golden Calf is power in this world, here and now. So it was for the Jewish Zealots. So it is for us. It’s true that Christians should engage the civic order as an obligation of the Word of God. Human law and public authority are important because they teach and form, as well as regulate. And politics involves getting and using the power to do so – which means that politics has moral implications that the Christian can’t ignore and still remain faithful to his vocation as a light to the world. (Matthew 5:14-16)
But power is an addictive drug. We have our own Zealots today who are adroit at using religious faith for political ends. This is especially (and ironically) true on the otherwise secular Left. Much of today’s “progressive” politics is a kind of Biblical messianism without the irritating baggage of a personal God.
Second, we’re never smarter than Jesus Christ – a lesson learned bitterly by Judas. When Jesus said, “my kingdom is not of this world,” he meant it. Christianity needs to guide our everyday behavior in the world with love and justice. But it’s not finally about power, and it’s worthless without its next-worldly, transcendent horizon. Either it’s salvific in the light of eternity, or it’s a waste of time. It can never be reduced to a system of wholesome ethics or social action. We can get that elsewhere.
Third, despair is a disguised sin of pride. Both Peter and Judas betrayed Jesus; Peter by his words, Judas by his actions. The abyss that separated the two men is what they did next. Peter loved Jesus more than himself and his damaged vanity, which led to his repentance and forgiveness. Judas abandoned himself to the evil of what he did, imagined himself unforgivable, and in doing that, repudiated God’s very nature.
In our own lives, we all choose between ourselves and God. On the brink of the Triduum, Judas is simply a reminder.
Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church .
Not really making up for lost time, but…
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
I remember reading some predictions a couple of years ago when the pandemic was first thrust upon us. Many were the voices suggesting that the church wouldn’t bounce back from the precautions taken due to COVID-19. We’d have to adjust to the new normal and we would never again invest in “brick and mortar” facilities, only social media messaging and ad hoc ministries.
To some extent, this has been born out. Thirty years ago, it was the figure of 40% of the membership being in worship which marked a healthy congregation. Today that figure has been lessened to 25% - if a quarter of the membership would be in worship on a weekend a congregation should feel some sense of satisfaction.
Sobering as that is, I was encouraged by Auguste Meyrat’s book review of sociologist Rodney Stark’s work The Rise of Christianity. “After laying out his methodology and background, [Stark] begins his argument with simple math. From the middle of the first century to the middle of the fourth century, the Christian community grew from a few hundred followers to nearly half the empire. Over three centuries, Stark determines that the Church grew at a rate of 40 percent each decade.”
“Finally, Stark discusses the physical context of Christianity’s rise, which generally took place in the biggest cities of the empire. These cities were not the orderly arrangement of columns and forums with men in clean white togas, as frequently depicted by the Renaissance painters. Rather, Roman cities were crowded, dirty, disorganized, and fractious. In his description of Antioch, one of the first sites of Christianity, Stark reinforces the larger point that Christianity ‘served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world.’
Paradoxically, Stark’s demystification of the spread of Christianity in the first centuries leads him to conclude that there is something truly special in Christian doctrine and the subsequent faith of the martyrs to sustain such consistent growth: ‘I believe that it was [Christianity’s] particular religious doctrines that permitted Christianity to be among the most sweeping and successful revitalization movements in history.’ This is about as close to belief as Stark comes in his analysis, though faithful readers will easily see God’s truth at the heart of it.”
So how might this encourage us, seeing the need for revitalization all around us?
Meyrat continues: “And it’s important that they do. Many parallels exist between the pre-Christian and post-Christian West. And the same virtues that allowed the Church to bring order to the surrounding chaos will likely do the same today.
No doubt, there’s disagreement on how to re-evangelize the world and whether to change various Church teachings to accommodate modern audiences, but one thing must remain constant: Christians must keep the faith and preserve the culture of life. Miracles would be nice in the short run, but in the long run, a steady commitment to the true faith in everyday matters will convert the world.”
God bless your everyday life as you witness to the grace of God in all that you say and do.