Forty days have now passed since our celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection and so we now come to celebrate our Lord’s Ascension into Heaven. Here He was taken up both Body and Soul into Heavenly glory. This celebration gives us reason to reflect upon where it is that we are being directed within this life.
When I prepare couples for marriage I always try to lead them in a series of questions. I want to know where they are going in life. From this question I receive many different answers, but I am looking for one specific answer. I hear we will get a house, we will get a job, we will have children, our children will grow up and move out. It them takes awhile to get to the uncomfortable and thus acknowledge the fact that they will grow old and die. In the end the answer that I am looking for is that we will get to Heaven.
With every God given vocation the goal in sight through our faithful embracing of such a call should be that of Heaven. I now pose this same question to each of you. We is it that you are headed? Are you striving to get to Heaven or instead has the here and now become more important then reaching this goal?
When we look at depictions of art concerning the Ascension of our Lord we often notice the heads of those gathered around being lifted upwards. So too we must lift our sight upwards towards Heaven and realize that this is our goal. In Sacred Scripture we are told about the pearl of great price which is worth selling everything in order to obtain it. Heaven is this pearl of great price and we should strive each day to obtain this goal.
Thankfully, we have not been left alone to accomplish this goal for ourself. It would seem that through the Ascension Christ has left our midst and we are alone to figure all this out. This is not the case because through faith we know that our Lord continues to dwell with us here in the Most Holy Eucharist. We also know that Christ promised that the gift of the Holy Spirit would come and so like a strong driving wind the Holy Spirit came down upon the apostles at Pentecost and left them forth to call all the nations to Christ.
