Feast of the Ascension: Look up!

In life, we all experience those “threshold” moments; moments when we transition in life and become more “adult”.  When Parents bring their child to kindergarten on the first day...we see tears. When that child later earns a driver’s license and needs the parents a little less. When that child leaves home, falls in love and gets married, then has a child, and the cycle begins again.  There are mixed emotions; happiness at this growth, sadness about the change. All of us recognize that it’s inevitable and necessary.

And then at some point too, what is it all for? What does this all mean?  We come up to the threshold of how we do see life and find purpose.

I think all people want to feel they are valued and what they do have purpose and meaning. Usually around this time of year with graduations, there will be the stories of parents who worked in the fields or other hard labor so that their children and succeeding generations will not have to.  And sometimes those succeeding generations lose sight of purpose; or their purpose becomes all about themselves: getting as much stuff as possible, achieving status and wealth. Which also in the end, does not satisfy completely.

God created heaven and earth; God’s will is for heaven and earth to be united. God works for that purpose and God created us for that purpose.  We believe we have the grand purpose of helping God make heaven here on earth.

Those foundational stories in Genesis are so wonderful. They share that our sight was on God; we looked to those qualities of virtues God; humanity lived them in paradise and built them up on earth. We humans were to look to heaven to do what we can on earth.  We can also read in Genesis and really through all of Scripture the chaos that occurred when humanity looked not up to God and heaven, but to below and into their own navels.

Thus the Son of God, in which heaven and earth are fully united; in which all of God lives, shows us what it means to have purpose and to follow the will of God.  Jesus, always looking heavenward, always looking up to God in Prayer and contemplation, healed, forgave, showed mercy and compassion, was humble, created community, he loved all even unto death.

Our purpose remains the same. And this Great feast day of Ascension reminds us of this. It is a threshold moment for humanity.  We have purpose, we look to Heaven for that guidance, and we live it out here on this earth.

Christ ascended into heaven, telling us this is where we seek true wisdom, true guidance, purpose and direction. Not to those things below.

We look to heaven and live with humility, forgiveness, love; we see beyond ourselves and our own needs, and we see others in needs, we see a world in need.  We can see the fruits of living with this divine purpose, with our eyes firmly directed to heaven and our feet firmly planted on earth.  We see community building. We see marriages healed. We experience growth. We see people treated with dignity. We see young persons finding safety to grow.

Conversely, when we see violence, as we have witnessed this past week in Israel and Gaza; when we see the divisions that exist in this country, the racism, the subtle acceptance of child abuse; when we see human persons treated as parasites or drains on our resources…. Depression and anxiety, young persons harming themselves, poverty… all these sins, the poisons and venoms of our existence. This is not God’s purpose.

So we as Catholics, we have that mission: we must keep our minds, eyes, hearts directed to what is above. Every day, stand in prayer, look up to God and say “Our Father, Your Kingdom come...Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”  Every week, we come to Eucharist to stand with each other, to focus in our the true savior of this world, present among us, who directs our selves to heaven.

Then we go, and we live with purpose, we live with mission.  We go through those thresholds into the world, our world.  We go to counter all that venom and sin and poison and, we with in humility, in love, we accomplish what we can in forgiveness, mercy and compassion: whether we are in the fields, in a lab, an office, whether single, married or celibate; in all places and in all moments in this little part of creation given to us, we build heaven here on earth.

Fixed on heaven, we can discern what is truly needed as family, as spouse, as priest and parish; as an adult just starting out in the world, just entering college, just graduating…  We can say this, and not this;

We can find purpose.