OMELIE / Omelie EN

01 giu 2025

01/06/2025 – The Ascension of the Lord - C

01/06/2025 – The Ascension of the Lord - C

1st reading Acts 1,1-11 from Psalm 46 2nd reading Heb 9,24-28; 10,19-23 Gospel Lk 24,46-53

St Luke ends his gospel and begins the Acts of the Apostles by telling us how Jesus ascends into heaven. This mystery takes place forty days after the Resurrection and nine before Pentecost. During the forty days he continued to speak about the kingdom of heaven. This is indeed the subject that occupied Jesus from the beginning of his preaching: and this is still very important to him after the resurrection. In fact, the kingdom of heaven is to be experienced by us here on earth, to transform the world back into an earthly paradise. If we obey the King who comes from heaven, we become the kingdom of heaven: all men were conceived and created by God to live the divine life, enlightened and guided by God's Holy Spirit.

The ascension into heaven takes place between the Lord's victory over death and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the apostles: it is a mystery that manifests to us the glory of Jesus welcomed by the Father at his right hand side, and who can therefore send us the promised Spirit.

He thus accomplishes the sanctification or deification of us, sinners. It seems to be a mystery of passage, the mystery that seeks to answer the question that the disciples then, and all Christians today, asked and ask themselves: ‘Where is now our Master, our Lord? Where is Jesus? If he is no longer among the dead, if he is risen but we never see him, where is he?’. Here is the answer: he is where God is. He is united with the Father in that glory in which he was “before the world was”, because he too is God. The letter to the Hebrews answers our question exactly: “Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a copy of the true one, but heaven itself, that he might now appear before God on our behalf”.

This certainty is a source of joy and security for us. He continues to think of us, continues to live “on our behalf ”. Believing and believing in Jesus is no illusion, but continues to make our life holy and secure, steadfast in the truth of the gospel, certain in our journey, though apparently obscured by the cross. Indeed, the cross itself now becomes the beacon that illuminates, guides and makes beautiful our every day.

Jesus accompanies his ascension to heaven with a blessing to the apostles. By blessing them he entrusts them with the task, or rather, gives them the command, to go into the whole world to make disciples of him of all men, teaching and baptising them. They no longer have to stand all together around him in one place on this earth, but are to go and tell everyone that he is there, with God. And so they will tell everyone of God's love manifested in Jesus, and so they will begin in the world, in this world so sad and fearful, so full of hatred and selfishness, a new era, that of love, an era which the cross is the symbol of.

When men will know that God loves, they will understand that their life only gains value by loving, they will understand that the meaning of life is hidden in love, and they will begin to live by offering themselves.

Jesus' ascension marks the beginning of the Church's mission, the beginning of the change of the world. How the world has changed where the Word of Jesuswarrived and where he was worshipped in his divinity! How much suffering was alleviated where the disciples obedient to the Lord arrived! How many initiatives of love and peace were developed where Jesus, hidden in heaven, was proclaimed, blessed and loved!

Jesus at the right hand of the Father continues to “see” his own who love him, and, coming out of themselves and their world, go forth to give the new and eternal life that flows from the faith in him.

The Church gives the world wich is restless and suffering, maybe even in anguish, evil and capable of enjoying the suffering of others, light, life, and the ability to see the eternal meaning of every fragile step. The Church's mission does not harm peoples, on the contrary, it saves them from ruin, from being a prison for her members, and makes them places of communion, joy, growth and peace.

Let us enjoy today's mystery and the task that not only the Church as a whole, but each of those who love Jesus, receive from him: to make him known so that others may live, and so that peace may spread throughout the world!