“And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
As I’m sure many of you
did, when I was a child I had the experience of getting lost in a store.
I wandered for minutes that felt like days, searching frantically for my
parents. I can’t remember why I wandered off. I can’t
remember how long I wandered before realizing I was lost. But I
remember as if it were yesterday what it felt like to suddenly, in the pit of
my stomach, realize both my need for someone, and that that someone was
somewhere unknown.
It’s one thing to need someone, but be able to reach them. This is the safety that a home with walls gives, or a back yard with a fence. A child can play with peace of mind, even if at a distance, because he knows how to reach his parents, and knows that he can at any moment.
It’s another thing to need someone, and know where they are, but not be able to reach them. This is what a child, as he grows older, experiences when he gets lost in a large store. He knows that his parents aren’t going to leave the store without him, but all his searching leaves him bewildered. He grows frustrated, but not panicked.
It’s yet another thing to need someone, and not know where they are, and not know how to reach them. This is what a very young child feels when he gets lost. Although his parents have no intention of leaving the child alone, the child in his imagination pictures himself without his parents, and feels both unknowing and unable to reach his parents.
It’s one thing to need someone, but be able to reach them. This is the safety that a home with walls gives, or a back yard with a fence. A child can play with peace of mind, even if at a distance, because he knows how to reach his parents, and knows that he can at any moment.
It’s another thing to need someone, and know where they are, but not be able to reach them. This is what a child, as he grows older, experiences when he gets lost in a large store. He knows that his parents aren’t going to leave the store without him, but all his searching leaves him bewildered. He grows frustrated, but not panicked.
It’s yet another thing to need someone, and not know where they are, and not know how to reach them. This is what a very young child feels when he gets lost. Although his parents have no intention of leaving the child alone, the child in his imagination pictures himself without his parents, and feels both unknowing and unable to reach his parents.
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Abandonment, of course, is
something altogether worse. Abandonment means needing someone, and having
that someone willfully remain at a distance in spite of your need.
It does not matter whether you know how to reach that person, or
whether you are able to reach that person. Abandonment implies
that even were you to find that person, he would turn away.
The perception of abandonment is often portrayed in the Sacred Scriptures. Perception is not the same thing as reality, of course. But the most famous example in the Old Testament is the Book of Job. This entire book tells about a man who lives uprightly. He leads a holy life, as holiness would have been understood in his day. And yet, tragic suffering strikes Job in practically every way possible. Each of his beautiful children is killed. He suffers an agonizingly painful disease. His worldly possessions are wrenched from him. And perhaps worst of all, his wife and three closest friends harangue him, bidding him to curse God and die! Those persons dearest to him encourage him to abandon God, so clear seems the evidence that God has abandoned Job.
Another example of seeming abandonment is illustrated in the Book of Exodus. The people of Israel are miraculously freed from their slavery to the pharaoh. The Lord God feeds His people with manna from Heaven while they make pilgrimage to the land flowing with milk and honey which God has promised them. And so, surrounded by miracles—in their recent past, their present, and their promised future—the Israelites grumble against God. While Moses converses with God atop Sinai, they fashion an idol, so willing are they in their fickleness to believe that their God has abandoned them.
Yet the most famous example of seeming abandonment comes from the New Testament, in the Gospel passages we heard six weeks ago, on Passion Sunday and Good Friday. Jesus, having been nailed to a cross, cries out in the words of the 22nd Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Scholars have debated in what way Jesus meant these words. As God, Jesus always knew the future: we only have to think of the many times that Jesus predicted to His disciples His own passion, death and resurrection. Had Jesus forgotten these predictions while hanging on the Cross? Did Jesus Himself believe that His Father had abandoned Him? Or did Jesus’ quoting the 22nd Psalm have another meaning?
Many saints who have meditated on this passage have suggested that in crying out the words of the 22nd Psalm, Jesus is summing up, gathering into Himself, all of mankind’s perceived abandonment by God throughout history. This parallels what St. Paul said about Jesus in his Second Letter to the Corinthians: that “[f]or our sake [God the Father] made him to be sin who did not know sin”. On the Cross, Jesus became abandonment who was one in essence with God the Father. On the Cross, itself the symbol of seeming failure, Jesus in His humanity points to the emptiness of human power, and the need to rely absolutely on God.
These last two weeks of the
Easter Season challenge us by pointing to the emptiness of human power apart from
God’s divine life. Today’s Gospel passage consists of the last five
verses of Matthew’s account of the Gospel. Two facts about this passage point
our attention to the emptiness of human power apart from God’s divine life.
First is the doubt that the eleven apostles hold inside them. You would think that the last five verses of the Gospel would portray the apostles at a high point. These Eleven have largely evaded Jesus during His Passion and death. For the past forty days, these Eleven have witnessed the Risen Lord. Nonetheless, Matthew tells us that “when they saw [Jesus], they worshiped, but they doubted.”
It’s also notable that Matthew doesn’t actually tell here of Jesus’ Ascension. The Church proclaims these five verses on the Solemnity of the Ascension. Yet the event of the Ascension is not narrated. There’s something about both of these facts that leaves both Matthew’s entire gospel account, and our celebration of the Ascension, very open-ended, as if the story were not yet over...
The perception of abandonment is often portrayed in the Sacred Scriptures. Perception is not the same thing as reality, of course. But the most famous example in the Old Testament is the Book of Job. This entire book tells about a man who lives uprightly. He leads a holy life, as holiness would have been understood in his day. And yet, tragic suffering strikes Job in practically every way possible. Each of his beautiful children is killed. He suffers an agonizingly painful disease. His worldly possessions are wrenched from him. And perhaps worst of all, his wife and three closest friends harangue him, bidding him to curse God and die! Those persons dearest to him encourage him to abandon God, so clear seems the evidence that God has abandoned Job.
Another example of seeming abandonment is illustrated in the Book of Exodus. The people of Israel are miraculously freed from their slavery to the pharaoh. The Lord God feeds His people with manna from Heaven while they make pilgrimage to the land flowing with milk and honey which God has promised them. And so, surrounded by miracles—in their recent past, their present, and their promised future—the Israelites grumble against God. While Moses converses with God atop Sinai, they fashion an idol, so willing are they in their fickleness to believe that their God has abandoned them.
Yet the most famous example of seeming abandonment comes from the New Testament, in the Gospel passages we heard six weeks ago, on Passion Sunday and Good Friday. Jesus, having been nailed to a cross, cries out in the words of the 22nd Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Scholars have debated in what way Jesus meant these words. As God, Jesus always knew the future: we only have to think of the many times that Jesus predicted to His disciples His own passion, death and resurrection. Had Jesus forgotten these predictions while hanging on the Cross? Did Jesus Himself believe that His Father had abandoned Him? Or did Jesus’ quoting the 22nd Psalm have another meaning?
Many saints who have meditated on this passage have suggested that in crying out the words of the 22nd Psalm, Jesus is summing up, gathering into Himself, all of mankind’s perceived abandonment by God throughout history. This parallels what St. Paul said about Jesus in his Second Letter to the Corinthians: that “[f]or our sake [God the Father] made him to be sin who did not know sin”. On the Cross, Jesus became abandonment who was one in essence with God the Father. On the Cross, itself the symbol of seeming failure, Jesus in His humanity points to the emptiness of human power, and the need to rely absolutely on God.
First is the doubt that the eleven apostles hold inside them. You would think that the last five verses of the Gospel would portray the apostles at a high point. These Eleven have largely evaded Jesus during His Passion and death. For the past forty days, these Eleven have witnessed the Risen Lord. Nonetheless, Matthew tells us that “when they saw [Jesus], they worshiped, but they doubted.”
It’s also notable that Matthew doesn’t actually tell here of Jesus’ Ascension. The Church proclaims these five verses on the Solemnity of the Ascension. Yet the event of the Ascension is not narrated. There’s something about both of these facts that leaves both Matthew’s entire gospel account, and our celebration of the Ascension, very open-ended, as if the story were not yet over...
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Jesus’ death is to
His Resurrection, what His Ascension is to Pentecost. In both
cases, Jesus leaves His followers behind. In both cases, His followers
have doubts. They may have felt abandoned. In both cases, something
far greater than is imagined possible is accomplished by Jesus. Jesus
never restores the status quo.
Who among Jesus’ disciples would have thought, following His crucifixion, that Jesus would not only survive the torture of those Sorrowful Mysteries—would not only return from the dead—would not only rise in a glorified body that could pass through walls—but would through His glorified Body give them a share in divine life, and promise them a share in the Resurrection? Jesus never merely restores the status quo.
Who among Jesus’ disciples would have thought, following His Ascension to Heaven, what might lay ahead? The disciples knew they needed Jesus. They saw Him rise to Heaven: they knew where He was. But how could they reach Him?
The Ascension is not the end of the Gospel. The answer─the key─to reaching Jesus occurs ten days after the Ascension. We hear this today in the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer. We hear the priest pray:
Who among Jesus’ disciples would have thought, following His crucifixion, that Jesus would not only survive the torture of those Sorrowful Mysteries—would not only return from the dead—would not only rise in a glorified body that could pass through walls—but would through His glorified Body give them a share in divine life, and promise them a share in the Resurrection? Jesus never merely restores the status quo.
Who among Jesus’ disciples would have thought, following His Ascension to Heaven, what might lay ahead? The disciples knew they needed Jesus. They saw Him rise to Heaven: they knew where He was. But how could they reach Him?
The Ascension is not the end of the Gospel. The answer─the key─to reaching Jesus occurs ten days after the Ascension. We hear this today in the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer. We hear the priest pray:
“Christ, the mediator
between God and man,
judge of the world and Lord
of all,
has passed beyond our
sight,
not to abandon us but to be
our hope.
Christ is the beginning,
the head of the Church;
where He has gone, we hope
to follow.”
Christ has ascended to Heaven,
not for Himself, but for us: to allow us
to become Him. Between now and
Pentecost, open your heart, mind and soul to God the Holy Spirit. Pray to God the Holy Spirit: ask Him to strengthen you for whatever He may
ask you to carry out, as a member of the Body of Christ.
