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16 mag 2021
16/05/2021 – ASCENSION OF THE LORD - B

16/05/2021 – ASCENSION OF THE LORD - B

Reading 1 ACTS 1,1-11 Psalm 46/47 Reading 2 EPH 4,1-13 Gospel MK 16,15-20

Today we join the apostles looking up at the sky, almost as to follow with our eyes the Lord who is disappearing from our sight in order to take His place at the right hand side of the Father. And so we too hear said to us by the angels that the same Jesus who have been enveloped by the cloud will come back riding the clouds of the sky. The image of the cloud is an image that since old times is referring to the hidden but real presence of God. Jesus is coming back, and therefore we live without regrets and nostalgia, we live getting ready to His coming. We are getting ready to give back to Him the treasures He has left with us, to build a society worthy of Him, where they live His words and His spirit of love and humility is blowing.

Let us look back to earth in order to make of it a welcoming garden, a place for Jesus' glory, fit for welcoming Him and letting Him exercise His royalty. Look, we have received from Him light, grace, strength and love in order to transform the world. The lack of the Lord’s visible presence, not being able to see the Jesus who the apostles have seen and who we have desired to see, is not deprivation. He will come back, and we will keep living as if He was still here on earth: we are waiting for Him as the servants in those parables He has told and which have prepared us to understand today’s mystery.

We, who cannot see Him, have the possibility of preparing earth for His coming as the apostles have begun. They have announced His salvation to every creature with their words. With their words let us bring the good news in the whole world so men can believe and, by believing, will have life and be safe. Jesus Himself promised to be present to us even when we cannot see Him. He will always be there, where you are talking lovingly about Him, and His presence will be evident through the miracles He will operates in order to prove His Word.

Jesus' ascension to heaven is marking the moment in which the Church begins to act on its own authority. From this moment on the apostles start to realise they are necessary to God the Father for His kingdom. Now they can and must take decisions and make choices, they will need to move around with freedom and assertiveness in the world, which sometimes looks like it is waiting for them, but also which is treating them with the same hostility with which it has treated the Lord: now they are starting to take seriously His instructions. They are waiting for the strength of the Holy Spirit with its inspirations, which is going to make them witnesses of the Father’s love, shown by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Their testimony will be given in different ways, all of them guided by God’s wisdom and knowledge: sometimes He makes wonderful things and miracles in order to prove the truth of their words, but He can also make use of their suffering and their martyrdom in order to open the doors of the heart of a single person or of entire peoples to the faith.

History is rich in every type of testimony given by the disciples to their Lord. And history is waiting also for my testimony, and yours. I know Jesus is in heaven, so in the space and time of God, of the Father: I am not asking to see Him with these very eyes of mine, instead I am promising to live His word in a way to make my life a place where others can experience His love and His wisdom. I am pledging myself to live united to the other believers, because my testimony alone would tell too little, it would not bite into the world’s mentality. My testimony needs above all to help showing the unity of the Church: is the latter, the Church, which brings Jesus' salvation into the world.

Saint Paul in the letter to the Ephesians insists on this topic. All the different gifts that God has given to the single believer need to be a tool to build each other up. God’s love, which I have received, is highlighting the one you have received, and enables it to bear fruit. We have received different gifts, but all of them are useful and necessary in order to shape the single body, the body of Christ, the body which makes present in the world Jesus' love, who is waiting for us at the Father’s side.