Published May 12 2024

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

Thursday May 9, 2024: Ascension of the Lord – Year B

1st reading: Acts 1,1-11

Psalm: 46 (47),2-3,6-7,8-9

2nd reading: Ephesians 4,1:13-XNUMX

Gospel: Mark 16, 15-20

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“After these words, while the Apostles were looking at him, he rose up, and a cloud came and took him out of their sight”, and since that day, we no longer see Jesus... The Heaven of which we speak, to which we refer every time we pray the Our Father - Our Father, who is in heaven - this Heaven, this “beautiful Sky” as Saint Thérèse likes to call it, this beautiful Heaven, she tells us, is our Homeland and this earth is an exile. 

This is what we sing, especially in the Hello Regina : exules filii Hévæ … in hac lacrimárum válle, exiled son of Eve in this valley of tears. And for Saint Thérèse, this exile-Homeland couple is very structuring of her spiritual life. She understands that the fullness of life is Heaven. It is this Homeland towards which we are marching, but which in no way devalues ​​life on this earth. In her last weeks, Sister Marie de la Trinité made a remark to Thérèse; she said to him: “Oh, how sad life is.” And Thérèse reacts vigorously, she replies: 

“Life is not sad! on the contrary, she is very cheerful. If you said: “Exile is sad”, I would would understand. We make a mistake in giving the name life to what must end. It is only to things in heaven, to that which must never die, that we should give this true name; and, as such, life is not sad, but cheerful, very cheerful!..."

Through baptism, Christ makes us members of his Body. I said that we no longer see Jesus since the Ascension, but we see his Body which is the Church. The world sees Christians; these Christians are those who have received this grace of baptism which configures them to Christ and which makes them members of his Body. How to live ? How can we live on this earth when our head, Christ, is in Heaven? This question is not new. In one of his sermons, Saint Augustine said this: “Why do we not also work on earth, in such a way that through faith, hope, charity, through which we relate to him, we would we already rest with him now, in heaven? He, while there, is also with us; and we, while we are here, are also with him. He does this through his divinity, his power, his love; and we, if we cannot do it like him through divinity, we can nevertheless do it through love, but in him. » (Office of Ascension Readings)

At the Ascension, the angels ask the men of Galilee a question that resembles a reproach: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking at the sky? » But the reproach is not looking at the sky; it's to stay there without moving! The Letter to the Hebrews will invite us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ who is the origin and the end of our faith (Hb 12,2). Of course we must keep our eyes fixed on our horizon, on this “beautiful Sky” towards which we are walking, just as the mountaineer constantly has in mind the summit towards which he is advancing, sometimes without seeing it. But it's about not just sitting there waiting for things to happen. It is about acting in this world through faith, hope and charity. “The Church, said the holy Pope Paul VI, exists to evangelize” (Evangelii nuntiandi n°14) and evangelization is not first of all a speech: it is first of all an act of salvation which manifests itself through our converted lives. We have heard, in the Letter to the Ephesians, what the apostle asks of us, what he exhorts us to do: “I, who am in prison for the Lord’s sake, therefore exhort you to conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of your vocation.” 

We heard it last Sunday: “ It wasn't you who chose me, says the Lord, it is I who have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” We are all called by the Lord, and it is about leading a life worthy of this call, of this vocation. Paul continues: “Have great humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love; take care to maintain unity in the Spirit

through the bond of peace. ». This is a great program! And when Paul invites us to support one another with love, the first person we have to support is ourselves and that's not the easiest thing! We must learn to bear with ourselves with humility, meekness and patience, to love ourselves as Christ loves us, he who is meek and humble of heart. We will not be able to love our neighbor like ourselves if we don't work on loving ourselves with humility, gentleness and patience in  support us with love. Christ leaves his Church in the midst of the world, which is not only witness to what Jesus accomplished through his death and resurrection, but which makes present today in the world the love with which Christ loved the world , all the men. And how do we make this love present? By loving one another as the Lord has loved us. We are in exile on this earth, walking towards the Homeland, but at the same time, this Homeland towards which we are walking, this horizon of our lives is already present in this exile.

In the Letter to the Ephesians of which we have heard a few verses, in the first chapter, Paul reminds us that we have received the Spirit promised by God which is like “an advance on our inheritance” (1,14). 

The Holy Spirit makes this beautiful Heaven present in our lives. The sacraments of the Church are gestures of power from our Heavenly Homeland which are played out in our exile. The Holy Spirit makes Jesus present, and Jesus makes Heaven present.

Thérèse has very beautiful words in a letter to her sister Agnès, she says to her: 

Oh ! that the earth is exile!… There is no support to seek outside of Jesus because He alone is immutable. What joy to think that he cannot change… (LT 104 to Sister Agnès, May 6, 1890)

Yes, in this land of exile, the immutable Jesus, definitively victorious, makes Heaven present. And in this land of exile, we have to manifest what is the Heaven towards which we are walking, perhaps even more today than yesterday, because our Western world has completely lost all compass. Having evacuated the Creator, the creature's life no longer has meaning. We have to bear witness to the meaning of human life. We were created in the image and likeness of God and our vocation is to enter into full communion with God. It is this which illuminates our path, which reveals its meaning, which reveals its value, which reveals the value of all human life... and even which illuminates the mysterious meaning of suffering and death.

In her very beautiful poetry from January 1897, therefore Thérèse's last year, the poem My “Heaven here below”, this stanza that Thérèse will recite by heart on August 2 when she is in the infirmary, she says:

Your Face is my only Homeland
She is my Kingdom of love
She is my smiling Meadow
My sweet Sun every day
She is the lily of the valley
Whose mysterious perfume
Console my exiled soul
Makes him taste the peace of Heaven. (PN 20)

When Thérèse recited this stanza on August 2, 1897, suffering from tuberculosis, she suffered martyrdom, she was regularly suffocating. And this presence of Christ in which she places her faith is a sweet consolation for her, a sweet presence which illuminates her very obscure path and which allows her to persevere in faith, hope and charity. 

Yes, on this Feast of the Ascension, we must keep our eyes raised to Heaven, contemplating this Homeland towards which we are walking while we are in exile on this earth. 

But we must not just stand there and watch. 

We must follow Jesus tirelessly, without ever becoming discouraged, to move forward and achieve, through his Passion and his Cross, the glory of his resurrection.

Amen