THE SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

The Martyrdom of St. Stephen, Annibale Carracci 1604, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.

Stephen said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him together. They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him.      Acts of the Apostles, 7:55-57.

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St. Stephen is revered as the first person to die for love of God, Jesus the Son of God and the Holy Spirit of God. His words exalting Jesus the Christ as the Messiah were so offensive to those who heard them that they stoned him to death, even though that was forbidden in the Roman Empire unless ordered under Roman authority. It was the first taste of the persecution God’s People would undergo for the next 300 years from many different quarters. And note, Stephen was one of the first ordained deacons of the church. The word deacon means servant in Greek; he had been ordained to serve the people of God, and he demonstrated that by dying a martyr’s death, the first of many martyrs to enter God’s kingdom thus; he was God’s servant first. You may recall that his feast day is December 26. The contrast is presumably intended, the birth of an innocent baby on the 25th and the brutal death of a man refusing to betray all that the baby represented remembered on the very next day. And the power which gives life to the birth of Jesus, the strength which Stephen demonstrated in bearing witness to Jesus, and the second reading inviting “the one who thirsts come forward, and the one who wants it receive the gift of life-giving water” are all examples of the love God has for us, expressed in many ways. It is the power which gives us more strength than we know. And sometimes it is good to demonstrate that love in unexpected ways, the expression of which is left to each of us. God has given multiple examples; pick and choose!

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Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

The Ascension of the Lord, S. G. Rudl 1900, St. Wenceslas Church, Prague, Czech Republic.

Then [Jesus] led them out as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.     Luke 24:50-51.

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Notes from the first reading:

1. Jesus’ disciples asked “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” In other words, they still expected the Messiah to be a conquering soldier! And Jesus said definitively, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority…” Remember those words the next time someone announces that the world will end on a certain future date. It is NOT for us to know!
2. Jesus quite clearly enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for “the promise of the Father about which you have heard me speak”. The two men on the road to Emmaus were clearly disobeying that instruction, until, of course, the Lord caught up with them and, as a result, they voluntarily returned to Jerusalem.

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The Lord’s ascension into heaven effectively ended his bodily presence here on earth somewhat spectacularly. Death had no further power over him, and he was destined to be seated at the right hand of the Father. Consequently he had to depart this world. It was also to fulfill his promise to send the Holy Spirit to us and hence begin the era of the Holy Spirit which has lasted to the present day: “…it is better for you that I go away, because if I do not go, the Helper will not come to you. But if I do go away, then I will send him to you” Jesus said (John 16:7). In other words, it was necessary for the Lord to ascend to his Father in order to send the Holy Spirit to us, and inaugurate the time of the Spirit, in which we now all live. Remember that over the centuries before Jesus, God the Father slowly revealed the nature, the qualities, of God through the pages of the Old Testament. Then Jesus had to demonstrate totally and completely the identical qualities in his own life in order to be recognized as God’s Son. Finally, the Holy Spirit, sent by God, has been with us ever since, being the power through which we all strive to be good followers of Christ in the world, in fact to be Christ to the world as best we can. From the Ascension on, the saints have been the guiding men and women who have modeled themselves on Christ and shown us what it truly means to be Christ to the world. And we try our best to do exactly that. In fact, we have to exhibit the identical qualities of God in our lives.

For example, one of the first qualities revealed by God was power. Abraham was an old man, perhaps near 100, and his wife was perhaps a few years younger, yet God announced she would have a child. Sarah laughed at hearing this, and then argued with God! (Genesis 18: 10-15). She gave birth to Isaac. Anything is possible with God. Jesus had divine power, the supreme example of which was the raising of Lazarus from the dead. And each one of us has power too. Even a 6-year old has power! How? I ask altar servers sometimes, “Do you have the power to make your mother’s life today a total misery?” and then, “Do you have the power to make today one of the best days of your mother’s life?” The answer is clearly “Yes” to both questions. We all have power, but do we use it as Jesus would? Take a look at the lives of the saints; they used their God-given power to do great things, just as a 6-year old has. We know deep down what our powers can do in the way we conduct our lives. Another divine quality revealed through the Old Testament is that God is relational, unlike just about all the pagan gods of the time. Moses asked God for the divine name at the famous scene with the burning bush. God revealed the divine name, Yahweh, I AM WHO AM, at that moment creating a relationship between God and Moses, and through Moses to the entire Hebrew people. Jesus took this quality to the level of the infinite, when at the Last Supper he took some bread and said to his disciples “Take, eat, this is my body”. Each time we consume the consecrated host, we literally incorporate the Lord into our own body; the relationship is total. And so we, in our lives, must be open to others, welcoming to others, friendly to others, help others, just as the Lord did. It is a divine quality. God revealed other qualities through the pages of the Old Testament: God listens, God forgives, God loves freedom, God is loyal, God is merciful. Jesus displayed each one of these in his ministry, clearly and strongly. And so must we. 

For a few days there was, in a sense after the Ascension, a sort of absence of God before the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday, 50 days after Easter/Passover (hence pente, the Greek for 5). A provocative friend of mine often suggested that it was at that “vacant” time that the empty seat at the table, once occupied by Judas Iscariot, was filled by a man rather a woman! Now there’s a thought to be pondered! One wonders. But Jesus had completed his vocation, to be Christ to the world, which is also our vocation, based on the gifts, the talents, that God has given us. Each one of us is a child of God through baptism. All was set after the Ascension, then, for the arrival of God’s Holy Spirit, to give each of us the strength, the power, to be truly children of God.

The Ascension of the Lord, unknown provenance.

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