Every Day We Pray Toward The Time Of Our Own Ascension Series

Solemnity of the Ascension 2025

Today we are gifted by God with readings centering on promises and partings. We affirm it every weekend: “He ascended into heaven” and ”sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” The Gospels are not entirely clear, but the tradition of the Church for two millennia has been that Jesus ascended from Bethany, just as St. Luke wrote for us today. The disciples then returned as He directed and prayed with Mary, Christ’s Mother, until Pentecost, which we celebrate next Sunday.

(Now this is Sunday, forty-three days after Easter. For generations we actually celebrated on Ascension Thursday, last Thursday, but the bishops voted to move the festivities to Sunday in most of the U.S. It was easier than getting us to get off work earlier to come to church, I suppose.)

We, like Christ, are called to ascend, and to live each day as if it were our last. Preparation for death is critical, because we never know whether today will be our last on earth. So we have wills and trusts and all that needs to be done after we are gone, and we entrust the ones we love to make all the arrangements we haven’t made already. But are our souls prepared? Even after forty days with the Risen Lord, some of the disciples, Matthew reports, still “doubted.”

Every day we pray that the Father forgive us for our offenses as we forgive each other for theirs. We need to unlock the door of our Father’s forgiveness; only we can do that. And on paper it’s quite simple. In our minds, each of us has a list of grudges from the past, actions or intentions we imagine from others who need to be forgiven. Sometimes those people have passed on to their eternal reward. We must forgive them all. That is critical. We don’t need to like them, but we must love them enough as the Father loves them to give them that gift.

Do it, now! I feel so very sorry for prominent Christians who have chosen the wrong path, for instance by disrespecting children in their mothers’ wombs so much that they are willing to help kill them before birth. If we do that willingly, over and over, each action, each donation to those organizations who facilitate abortion encrusts our consciences so we must think murder is right. Dying like that is too horrible to consider.

We are challenged today to look ahead and plan for eternity with God. At all times let’s consider that we are daily in that period between Christ’s ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit. We pray with Mary as the disciples did in the upper room, and do so with souls quieted from everyday concerns, as we await Christ’s summons.

Let’s all do that, as long as we are granted: “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might.” Glory be to the Holy Trinity, now and forever, Amen.