Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Mark 16: 15–20

If you have read the four gospels, and I hope you have read them, you have probably noticed that each of the gospel writers has a unique perspective and remembers some details differently than the others. The first three, the synoptic gospels, are quite similar to each other, but they have some variations. That is why they are called the synoptic gospels, since synoptic means "seeing with the same eyes." The Gospel of John varies dramatically from the first three. This reminds me of a funny meme I saw on Facebook. Jesus is sitting with the apostles, and he says to them: "Guys, I need you to listen very carefully. I don't want to see four different versions of this story getting out." But that's what we have—four versions of essentially the same story, but each with unique perspectives.

This weekend, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension, the day when Christ ascended into heaven. It’s celebrated elsewhere 40 days after Easter, but because we are “special,” the holy day is transferred to the next Sunday. And as I noted, we get four different accounts of the event which we hear in different years. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus asks the apostles to remain in Jerusalem until the spirit comes to them. It seems that Jesus ascended on the same day that he appears to them, after having opened their understanding to the scriptures. In the book of Acts, which was also written by Luke, Jesus stays with them for 40 days and teaches them, and only then ascends. In St. Matthew, Jesus says that he is going ahead of them to Galilee and makes no mention of the Ascension. Mark makes a general reference to Jesus' ascension but does not mention where or when. John mentions that they all went to Galilee, but he does not mention the Ascension at all. Why so much variation between accounts of this event?

            Some sceptics point to the conflicts in the four accounts as evidence of their dubiousness. But that’s exactly the wrong position to take. If you have four witnesses to the same event, do you get identical details in each? No, you get four perspectives from different angles. In fact, if you did get four identical accounts, any investigator worth his or her salt would suspect some mischief going on. The historicity of the four accounts is strengthened by the variation rather than weakened. And in reality, the variations are in small details. The general story that comes about is consistent in each account.

One of those areas of variation is in the Ascension account itself, wich again, only appears in Acts, Luke, and Mark. This event is the hinge that allows the door of the early Church to open itself up to the Holy Spirit. Jesus points out that He has to return to the Father, so that the Father can send the advocate, the defender, the Holy Spirit, to remind the Apostles of everything that had been revealed to them. Shortly after the Ascension, the Apostles returned to the Cenacle, where the Holy Spirit descends upon them on the feast of Pentecost, an event often referred to as the birth of the Church. This is the event of main interest in St. Luke’s two writings. In Acts, the writer provides a history of the early Church. The style of writing, with this prologue aimed at a particular audience, is precisely the type of historical account that was included at the time it was written. But it is a story with a specific objective, to communicate the truth about Jesus and share His Gospel.

So what does the Ascension mean for us as Christians in the 21st century? What did it mean for first century Christians? We can understand a little better if we remember how Jesus caused things to turn upside down. Jesus reverses the order of human experience in order to invite us into it, and then we experience it in reverse. Let me use some examples to explain what I mean. First, He existed in eternity, then He was incarnated, while we are incarnated to be born again after death into eternity. He is baptized to sanctify the waters of the earth, while we are sanctified by the water. Even in His way of speaking these same reversals are shown: in the Beatitudes, where we are told that the poor and persecuted are blessed; In the Gospel of Luke, it says that those who try to gain their life will lose it, but those who lose or give up their life will be saved. He speaks in these paradoxes so often that the Gospel of St. Mark suggests that the Apostles were actually afraid to question him. This is what the Scriptures mean when it says that He is going to be a sign of contradiction. That He will force us to reexamine just what it means to live a good life.

The Ascension is another of these reversals. He has come down from heaven to assume a human nature, a human form. He remains divine and omnipotent, but takes up the form of human weakness. And then, God the Son does something that no one could expect from a divine being: he allows himself to be brutally killed. But in this single person both human and divine, He has done something truly miraculous: He has united human nature with divine nature, so that human nature now conquers death, and He Himself rises from the dead. Of all the reversals, this is the most impressive we can imagine.

Jesus is not the God of great expectations. He is the God of mind-blowing results. He is not done with his work of redemption. The last step is our ascension with Him. He goes back to where he was before, a human nature transformed and united to the very life of God. His resurrection is a promise, and the Ascension is its fulfillment. Our ascension begins at baptism and ends with the resurrection. We are experiencing our own salvation in reverse. We are already saved. We just have to realize it... and act like it. If we did that, the world would be transformed.

St. Athanasius, whose feast day was last week, famously wrote that "the Son of God became man so that we might become God." Many early Church Fathers from Irenaeus to Clement of Alexandria to Augustine wrote similar statements. But what does this mean? We don’t literally become God. But we are brought into eternal participation in the divine life of God. We are together with Him and see Him directly and understand Him without our earthly limitations getting in the way. Saint Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians 13:12: "Now we see dimly as in a mirror; but one day we will see everything as it really is." Saint John wrote in chapter 3 of his first letter, "We must be like him, for we will see him as he is." All obstructions will be gone, and we will understand in a greater capacity the mind of God. That is what Ascension means to us. He will bring our bodies back to life, but most importantly, He will bring us into His presence forever, and there can be nothing greater than this.

Before I close, I want to take us back to the Gospel of Mark. The very fist verse of the reading today sends us on a mission: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” That is your mission, and over the last few weeks, we have been encouraging you to engage it in a very simple way: invite someone to Mass. If you have a friend or acquaintance who asks you questions about your faith and shows curiosity about what it means to be Catholic, don’t wait. Invite them. It could be the moment they’re waiting for and the opening for the Holy Spirit to awaken them.

Today, we also remember our mothers. Coincidentally, we all have them. But first we are going to recognize the holiest of our mothers, the Virgin Mary, whose image all of you women and girls are. Mary's experiences are the experiences of each of you: whether in your childhood before the Annunciation, or in raising a child, or in loss and pain. They all share in their experience, and we have all been blessed by our mothers. Happy Mother's Day!