Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The season of Easter is coming to an end with Pentecost next week. Has it been a good Easter for you. Has the Lord truly passed for you? When he passes your life is not the same. If it is the same, then he has not passed for you, yet. What does it mean to stay the same? Does it mean that the externals of our life have changed: your job or spouse or location? When the Lord passes, he makes new the heart of man.
Do you remember the reading at Easter that he will give you a new heart and infuse you with a new spirit? It was a promise that the Lord made to you that will happen in these fifty days, which are almost over. There is one week left in this Easter season, and he still will this new heart for you. Finish well the race; God can act in the last hundred yards.
It is not only in easter that you can experience this change, but it is a special time in which our Lord can raise you from your death? What is the death that you are suffering these days, an inability to love or forgive, which is a great death? It is very necessary for you to recognize your deaths in this life and that the Lord is able to raise you up.
What does it mean to raise you up? It is that something dead returns to life. He cannot resuscitate something that is not dead. That’s why it is fundamental to see and acknowledge that there is death in us, something that is not right, that is twisted in some way. It might be your sexuality, your love of money, your hard heart, your stinginess, your rebellion against your mom or dad, your failure to accept the history that God is doing with you. These are all events of death that destroy you, make you sad, show you that you don’t have an adult faith.
The Lord wants each of us to be raised up. And the stupendous news today is not only is the Lord risen but he ascends into heaven. You may think so what if he goes up or if he goes down to hell, what does it matter? If you believe that the Lord has the power to raise you up and has the power to make you rise to heaven because he takes us with him, then this is a very good news.
I am impressed by the first reading where there are two men dressed in white, angels, I suppose. They are watching as our Lord ascends to the sky and over the clouds, how wonderful. It is the Lord who is flying away and is going to the Father’s place; it wasn’t really like that, I sense. Everyone is looking up like little saints who come to daily Mass and say, oh, father, how beautiful. These people marvel at the beauty of heaven, but they do not enter it.
The two men in white ask the Galileans, why are you standing there looking up at heaven; don’t look at it, enter it. Yes, there are others who are so good and nice and they live in heaven with their ten children, how wonderful; but you also need to enter heaven. How beautiful it is when you can forgive; this is heaven. Don’t be staring up at the sky and miss seeing how beautiful is your sickness, no, enter it.
The Lord gives us an exhortation today: don’t just stare up at it, enter it!! What is heaven for you? That you have a home, or health, or money or an abundance of whatever. Our Lord says, you fool, this day I will ask for your soul; you get hit by a bus. What is your heaven a woman with 36 by 24 by 36 dimensions or the other way around 24 by 36 by 24? Heaven for you is someone telling you how wonderful and beautiful you are. Or one who gives you little kisses and treats you like a princess. What is your heaven? Is it a big house in the country, a penthouse in NYC, money in order to travel, a big car, a scholarship to college, your own home.
Your real heaven is the cross of Christ. This is heaven for you. How can that be that my suffering turns out to be my heaven. Yes, whoever gives up his life for my sake will find it. And whoever seeks his own life will lose it. Heaven is here, for you to live it now. What a pity, that you who were created to experience heaven here on this earth are trying to do it yourself. Only a Christian can see the cross as heaven.
In this solemnity of the Ascension of Christ into heaven, no man is closer to heaven than he who has embraced his cross. There is no man close to heaven than the one who is closest to the cross of Jesus Christ. Like Jacob who was being chased by his brother Esau because he stole from him the blessing of their father. How he didn’t kill him was a miracle and it was only because God had helped him. Jacob had a dream of a staircase to heaven and angels went up and down it. The staircase is a symbol of the cross; it touches heaven and is in the bed of love, the place where the Lord espouses us, where he makes love to you. On the cross you experience that deep intimate union with Christ. He will be with you in that illness, in your economic difficulties, in old age.
Our Lord invites you to enter it not with resignation but with joy. Then you can proclaim Christ. Your mission is to bring Christ to the world. You are the car or vehicle that takes him around; you carry someone very important. You are not the important one, but you carry the important one. Christ does the mission, not you. When you are able to experience heaven then you know there is nothing else. To feel the Lord’s love in the midst of this world, to feel loved, then you can carry this love to the world and proclaim the gospel. What are you going to proclaim your great deeds, your exploits, yourself, no? It is necessary to carry Christ with humility, with our sins.
Let yourself be loved by the Lord: let me love you, he says. Let the Lord help us, allow him to have mercy on us. His mercy is infinite. There is no limit, you will not be able to stop it. The love of God for you is heaven. There is nothing that can separate you from the love of God. The wisdom of God is stronger than the wisdom of this world. St. Paul says, when I am weak, then I am strong. When I see my weakness, then I can be strong with God. I can be Israel, whose name means strong with God, Jacob no longer. Without god you are nothing, with God you are strong, with God you can love. Christ rises with you, enters heaven with you, sits at the right hand of the Father with you.