Solemnity of the Ascension, A May 24, 2020
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Video of 8AM Mass: https://youtu.be/N-I0uCsPXIg
“God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.” That’s my favorite response of the whole year. I look forward to it every time Ascension rolls around. Not just the music – there are different versions that are all pretty good – but what it says, what it means to me… to us if we’re paying attention.
I mean, if we’re honest, most people pay no attention to the psalm at all. It kind of sounds like we’re just saying generically nice things about God, praising him in this vague way. And the music we use for it is not exactly top 10 or anything. It would not surprise me if most Catholics couldn’t even tell you what the psalm said 10 minutes after they heard it. Quite frankly, I’m not sure I always could.
But today’s solemn celebration is a great time to understand this neglected part of Mass, both because it has such a great response and because the psalm is the best way to express what just happened. Jesus ascends into heaven. It’s a mystery of the rosary, it’s part of the creed, it’s the end of the Gospel and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. And, even in places where we don’t move it to Sunday, it’s a Holy Day of Obligation – a feast so important that we would expect you to interrupt your work to go to Mass for the second time in a week just to celebrate it.
Why? What is so special about the Ascension? God mounts his throne, that’s why! Think about it. God, the infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe mounts his throne? As is, he wasn’t already on the throne? Was he not already king? Yes. And no.
God rules over the universe from the very beginning. Except as Jesus on earth. Jesus is both God and Man. As God, he was always king. But as a human being, he was a child, a carpenter, a teacher, and then a crucified criminal. Even when he rose from the dead, his human nature was on earth, a single planet in a single solar system in a single galaxy among billions.
Then he ascends into heaven. Jesus Christ, for the first time in history, takes his physical body into the invisible, non-physical, spiritual realm of heaven. Technically, there is no “throne” in heaven because there is nothing physical in heaven… until the ascension, that is. When Jesus Christ, God and Man, mounts his throne, he opens the way from this physical universe into the eternal spiritual realm of heaven so that even our bodies can be with God.
That’s why this psalm response is so amazing, because when God mounts his throne in the human nature of Jesus Christ, he makes room on his throne for all of humanity. God mounts his throne to put us on it! Clap your hands, sing praise, shout to God, blast the trumpet… what do all these exhortations from the psalm have in common? They require bodies. Doing this for the glory of God is a physical act.
God, for no reason other than love, created the universe so that finite creatures like us and the angels could enjoy existence and love. Since God is love, the best way to do that is to know and love God and, to celebrate constantly how great it is to be and to love. And, in the beginning, the ones who were best at it were the angels. Angels, who do not have bodies and who no longer run the risk of committing sin, are the perfect praisers of God.
We talk about angels singing and playing trumpets, but that’s metaphorical; they don’t have bodies. Because they don’t have bodies, they aren’t as limited in their ability to constantly praise and serve and love and be loved by God. In the hierarchy of creation, it was God, Angels, Humanity, and then the rest of the physical world. But then God mounted his throne in the body of Jesus Christ, and everything changed.
Now, because the Son of God has a human body in heaven, human beings are – or at least have the ability to become – higher than the angels! Our physically limited voices, our songs and instruments limited by time and volume have the chance to surpass the endless, perfect praises of angels because Jesus Christ raised us above them in his Ascension.
And what can we do in response to this overwhelming exaltation of human beings, body and soul? Praise God. And it’s what you want to do anyway. Think of what many people imagine to be the happiest moments of human life. Parties, Feasts, Weddings, Childbirth, Victory.
And Jesus Christ uses these same things as parables to explain the Ascension and Heaven to us. The parable of the wedding feast with the ten virgins, the king who goes to battle and returns victorious, the woman in labor pains who rejoices when the child is born, the master of the household out late but coming back. These moments tend to be rich, full, and consuming. To cheer at winning a competition or war, to sing your heart out, to get lost in the rhythm of a dance, to simply adore the new child in your arms. Something about these has the potential to reach deep into us and, for a few moments, make us feel whole and content, though there’s always that dread that the moment will end and boredom or sorrow will return.
And that’s why the psalms at Mass are important. Though they rarely have the actual physical power of these moments, the poetry, imagery, and music of them tries to express the reality of heaven… of being in heaven with Jesus Christ whose unity of divine and human natures makes our human nature like God. What we look forward to is not a polite tea party, but a full-throttled celebration that promises to engage your whole person without the dread of a return to dreariness.
God mounts his throne… and he seeks to bring us with him. And we cannot simply wait, staring at the sky for that to happen. God mounts… It’s present tense for a reason. Every prayer, every striving for virtue, every act of Charity is God-in-us mounting his throne to shouts of joy… to the angels and saints already in heaven rejoicing that we’re on our way. There is much work to do – proclaiming this good news to others chief among that – but do not forget even now to shout to God in your mind with joy, to blare the trumpet of your beating heart and be drawn with Him to His throne and our greatest hope.