Our Easter Mission from Ascension to Pentecost

In the Gospels for Mass during the Easter season we are told by Jesus that his disciples must “remain in him,” we must be grafted to him like branches to a vine in a vineyard and if we keep his commandments we will be bound to him by love.  In the Sunday readings from the epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul tells the first Christians they are temples of the Holy Spirit.  The father and the son share their Spirit of Love with us. So St. Paul can say, “Christ lives in me,” and so can we.  We know from St. Paul, and St. John and the words of Jesus himself that God is one but a Trinity of persons: father and son bound by their eternal Spirit of Love.

In his first epistle, St. John tells us that God is love.  There are many attributes that describe God, like all powerful, all merciful, all just, all faithful, infinite, etc.  but love is the best definition of God.  God’s love is not an emotion that is felt strongly sometimes and not so strongly at other times.  Love is God’s eternal desire to share his goodness with others.  Therefore, God creates a universe of creatures that reflect his goodness, and when he creates human beings, he creates them “in his own image and likeness.”  The creation story in Genesis builds up to this God-like image that we reflect, at times very poorly.  Relationships are everywhere in the universe.  Inanimate planets and stars are bound by forces of gravity and on our hospitable earth wolves travel in packs, some birds mate for life and whales sing to each other and travel in pods. With us humans, well, love isn’t always so easy but we can’t ever stop trying to love.  We were born to love and reflect that image of God.

The Easter season readings whose end we are approaching tract Jesus’ final and successful attempt to explain God’s plan for saving his dysfunctional human family.  His animal creation, as I mentioned, reflects God’s love to some extent but they do it by instinct.  Human love is a matter of choice, and it has to be given freely.  We have to want to love, to give ourselves to other human beings. Love is our glory, but when it fails it can be our greatest sorrow.  

 Jesus’ mission was to suffer and die to show us what true love is.  You might be thinking, “Couldn’t he have just had the perfect family?”  No, too many humans never make it to the altar at all, and life is too fragile.  Many die young and die painfully.  Disease, accidents, violence and war all take their toll.  God is love.  Everything he makes happen or allows to happen is done out of love.  But we cannot as creatures know the ways of God.  We have to live by faith that God is always with us, with hope that he will give us eternal joy and love him and one another.  Jesus, God’s own son, was sent to die and rise from the dead as a pledge of what God intends for us.  At the Last Supper Jesus told his disciples, “Where I am, you also will be.”  We, too, will rise and be with Jesus in heaven to where he ascended.  He triumphed over the cruelest death that the most powerful empire on earth could give him.  No wonder that when he first appeared to his apostles after his resurrection, his first words were, “Do not be afraid!”

From Jesus they learned what love truly is.  It is giving all that we have for others, at times even life itself.  Love, in the many ways we are called to give it, is always costly but in the end God is waiting for us.  With faith in that hope we can live a life for others as did Jesus.  The alternative is to live selfishly, trying to secure for ourselves as much material things as life can give us only to die sooner or later with nothing to hope for.  That is the Easter story which it was Jesus’ mission to teach, die and live again for us.  

The time from Jesus’ resurrection to his ascension into heaven, which we celebrated May 16, is filled with the accounts of his appearances to his disciples.  They not only became convinced that he truly had risen from the dead but also realized who he actually was.  In the words of St. Thomas, the doubter, “My Lord, and my God.”  

Before he left his apostles and returned to his father in heaven, Jesus gave his apostles and the church they were to lead a challenge.  He told them to wait for the promised Spirit they would receive:  “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”   As Jesus disappeared into the clouds, two angelic-looking men asked the apostles, “Why are you looking into the sky?”  In other words, “Get on with your mission that Jesus gave you.”  

Filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, they did just that.  St. Peter fearlessly proclaimed to a large crowd in Jerusalem for the feast, “God raised this Jesus: of this we are all witnesses.  Exalted at the right hand of God, he received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the father and poured it forth, as you both see and hear. Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand persons were added that day.”

The challenge to spread Jesus’ Gospel of life eternal is ours today.

Father Carville is a retired priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator. He can be reached at [email protected].