Homily for the Ascension May 12, 2018
Fr. Albert St. Peter’s, New Iberia
What is your heritage? What is your ancestry? This has been a year of coincidences: Ash Wednesday and Valentines Day. Palm Sunday and the Annunciation. Easter and April Fools day. Now it is Ascension Sunday and, for the people of New Iberia, today is the day we celebrate our Spanish origins. It’s also Mother’s Day, a celebration of our heritage and ancestry in the direct and personal way of celebrating our mothers.
And our heritage does matter. It is part of who we are, whether we like it or not. It’s not just that we have a particular set of genes or that we grow up with a particular cultural experience. Our heritage is important because it tells us something of how we got here, it leads up to our place in the great cosmic journey. For the people of New Iberia, the Spanish heritage is part of what explains our location, our architecture, and a thousand little details that lead up to where we are now.
As we honor our mothers, we recognize that, without them, we would not be at all. We rejoice in the ways that their heritage, their experiences of life, culture and family all played some part in what they have given to us. Above and beyond the mere biological and historical facts – things we did not choose – there is the heritage of their own personal choices, the acts of love great and small that have given rise to who we are and made possible our very lives. Thank you, mothers, for all you’ve done, for who you are, and who you strive to be!
And now, what does today’s Solemnity of the Ascension have to do with our heritage? Everything. Because the Ascension is the royal heritage of all Christians. As we said in our Psalm, “God mounts his throne to shouts of joy, a blare of trumpets for the Lord!” Jesus Christ’s Ascension is not so much about him leaving earth as it is about him returning home, the Return of the King to claim the throne that is rightfully his, the throne he shares with God the Father in heaven.
This royal procession is yet another key step in a whole series of divine movements that ultimately define who we are and where we belong. It began with God’s Word coming forth to create us in Love, making us in His image and likeness. God’s Word, which is also His Son, then entered into the world he created, born of a virgin mother. This makes us brothers and sisters to the Lord because we now share the same flesh, the reality of being human.
But that was only the beginning. God was not content to just share in humanity’s flesh and bones. No, his next move was to die for Love of us, a movement that makes us free, that saves us from sin. From there, he descended into Hell and broke free, rising from the dead; This makes us sharers in eternal life, giving us the ability to go beyond death itself.
And that brings us to this royal procession, the Ascension. Having taken on our flesh and brought it through death and back, Jesus now takes our flesh into heaven to reign as king. By Baptism into Jesus Christ, we now have the royal heritage that makes us kings and queens in the King. And as great as it is to know our Spanish ancestry, great as it is to cherish our mothers, this sacred reality is something even greater. Over and above any other aspect of our ancestry, the heritage we should cherish most is the ways in which these things have worked together to bring us into the faith.
Even after the protestant reformation, the country of Spain, and the colonists that came from there, retained a strong Catholic identity. This is something you can see by the fact that St. Peter’s sits so close to the heart of the town. And our mothers; How often it is the mothers who beget the faith in their children! By insisting on Baptism, by teaching us our first prayers, and by their own dedication to the faith, mothers so often give us that great gift of knowing and loving God and His Church.
Yes, even if we are not Spanish royalty, even if our mothers have no claims to noble blood, the Catholic faith that comes to us through this heritage is what makes us royal, victorious kings and queens according to God’s loving will. And the story, the great movement of our faith is not finished, it has not reached its goal just yet. Our nobility does not mean that we a free to take our rest, but that we have important work to do. Yes “grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift,” but this gift is meant to “build up the body of Christ.”
As his last command on earth, Jesus reminds us of the noble task that lays before us “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.” It is true that our culture and our family has done so much to hand the faith on to us, but that alone is not enough. Each passing generation has seen fewer and fewer of our own children embrace this sacred heritage. We cannot take for granted that our Catholic heritage will hand itself on, because it won’t. Unlike your genetics and your culture, the saving faith of Christ must be freely chosen, accepted and embraced.
And so, in addition to being kings and queens you are also meant to be the “holy ones” equipped for the “work of ministry.” Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is eager to remind each of us that we all have a place in the divine, royal mission of the Gospel. He tells us that God “gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers.” That list is not exhaustive and it is not meant for just the priests. You are meant to be prophets and evangelists and teachers and more. Every single baptized Christian is given a gift and a mission.
So, again I ask you, what is your heritage, your ancestry? You share in the royal line of Christ, but you must remember that the King of Kings will return to earth once more. Then he will take not only his own body into heaven, but the resurrected bodies of all his royal children, all those united to him by faith and Baptism. And that heritage cannot be something that stopped with us, something that we received and kept to ourselves. Across culture and race and language, what will matter when the king comes, what matters most of all will be what you have done to hand on the faith you have received.