Where do you look for the
love of God?
When, at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, two men dressed in white
garments stand beside the apostles,
their question is a pointed one: Why are you standing there looking at the
sky? At the Ascension of Jesus, the
apostles are called to refocus, to look inward rather than upward, for it is there
that they will find Jesus living in them, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation of which Paul speaks in
Ephesians. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, Jesus
has reassured them – and that Spirit will given them a new way of seeing, a new
purpose in life. Jesus’ Ascension thus
represents a significant shift in the way the apostles understand themselves,
which is to say that they are now members of a community filled with the love
of Christ, and gifted with the capacity to share that love with the world.
As Christians, we too are called to refocus,
that we might find the Spirit present in us as well. When, as Paul says, the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, then we can hope to be engaged
in a relationship of love with the Lord, a relationship in which we are always
moving toward fullness. Matthew’s Gospel
tells us that the disciples worshiped, but
they doubted. Do we come to church with absolute conviction? In baptism, we are brought into the fullness
of God – in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit – and our grasp on that fullness should shift how we
understand ourselves, and how we need to understand ourselves, which is as
members of the Body of Christ, a community with the Paschal mystery at its
core. All that God is doing in us right
now leads us to hope for perfect union; in the meantime, all that we do, all
that we say, should give witness and praise to God (Psalm 47). As we pass through the Feast of the Ascension
of the Lord, let us also look inward, rather than upward, opening ourselves to
the Spirit – that we might live from the love that is ours in common, and share
it with the world.
This post is based on Fr.
Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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