Why Did Jesus Leave Us?

We are at the end of the Easter Season.  We celebrated the ascension of our Lord on May 29, then Pentecost (the gift of the Holy Spirit 50 days after Easter), the feast of the Holy Trinity and the feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord (Corpus Christi).  Now it is back to Ordinary Time, continuing with the 13th Sunday to the 34th Sunday, which is also the feast of Christ the King and the last week of Ordinary Time.  

Sunday, Nov. 27, will be the First Sunday of Advent when we begin again preparation for Christmas, the birth of Jesus.  The whole story of our liturgical year climaxes with Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.  But then he is rather quickly gone, ascended into heaven.  He has left us! Why?  

The best answer of why the risen Jesus had to leave us is found in a sermon by St. Leo the Great, one of the greatest of the ancient fathers and doctors of our church.  He died in 461.  I am quoting from the Breviary, a book of prayer the priest uses daily: 

“Beloved, the days which passed between the Lord’s resurrection and his ascension were by no means uneventful; during them great sacramental mysteries were confirmed, great truths revealed.  In those days the fear of death with all its horrors was taken away, and the immortality of both body and soul affirmed.  It was then that the Lord breathed on all his apostles and filled them with the Holy Spirit; and after giving the keys of the kingdom to blessed Peter, whom he had chosen and set above all the others, he entrusted him with the care of his flock. Throughout the whole period between the resurrection and ascension, God’s providence was at work to instill this one lesson into the hearts of the disciples, to set this one truth before their eyes, that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was truly born truly suffered and truly died, should be recognized as truly risen from the dead.  The blessed apostles together with all the others had been intimidated by the catastrophe of the cross, and their faith in the resurrection had been uncertain; but now they were so strengthened by the evident truth that when their Lord ascended into heaven, far from feeling any sadness, they were filled with great joy.”

St. Leo continues by claiming that through Jesus’ resurrection and ascension into heaven “humanity was admitted to a seat at the right hand of the eternal, to be enthroned at last in the glory of him to whose nature it was wedded in the person of the son.”  

That certainly was reason for joy on the part of the 500 or so who actually saw the risen Jesus after his resurrection.  As St. Leo said, this was all the work of God’s providence.  It is that providence that resulted in the fast spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.  We can only guess by hindsight what was God’s plan.  

This would be my guess.  The historical Jesus was limited by his humanity.  He was born at the beginning of the reign of the Roman emperors in the small, mid-eastern Roman colony of Palestine.  He was a Jew, a member of only one of the many races in the empire.  As an itinerant rabbi, he gathered many followers with his new and “authoritative” interpretation of the God of Jewish Scriptures.  He was faithful to his knowledge of this God of mercy and love and died because of his prophetic preaching.  

His death, however, was not an historical accident, not just one more martyrdom for truth, another small blip on the screen of history.  His death was in the eternal plan of God, for it was his passage to becoming the risen Lord of all.  As St. Peter tells the family of the Roman, Cornelius, “You have heard of Jesus of Nazareth, how he was put to death but how God raised him, Jesus of Nazareth, to be Lord of all” (Acts 10:34-43).

In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus recognizes the limitations of his earthly existence.  He tells his apostles at the Last Supper that he must return to the father.  His mission of revealing the one true God to all human beings cannot be completed unless he dies like the grain of wheat and rises to bear much fruit.  They will receive his Spirit and spread it throughout the world if he dies and rises.  

And so the historical Jesus died, and with his death also died the limitations of his physical humanity.  He was now Lord of all.  St. Paul put it beautifully, “For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:27-28).

It is difficult to picture a person as universal as Jesus.  Yet, it is certainly true that his church multiplied despite persecutions and has spread to all peoples.  His story was written into the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, whose understanding of the Jesus whom they first saw as a mere man became heightened by their contact with the risen Christ.  Jesus was no longer a simple Jewish rabbi.  They now identified him as the “risen Lord” and Son of God (Acts 2:32-36).  Through his resurrection Jesus is the supreme Lord of life and death.

He who conquered death promises us life with him, life with God for all eternity.  Our prayer at the close of this Easter season should be the closing words of the Bible in the Book of Revelation: “Come Lord Jesus.”

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 johnny [email protected].