It does not come as a surprise that when the Son of God made the journey to our world He had in his pocket a return ticket. Heaven is where He belongs. He did not come among us in order to stay for ever in this world, but rather to take us with Him to His home. Today, He goes first. He opens the door (which has never been shut on God’s side) and He brings into God’s dwelling all that He took on when He entered our world: His soul and His body, His memories, His achievements, and of course all His loved ones – that is to say, all of us, if we so wish. In Him, one of us, a member of the human family, penetrates the highest heavens – an image which suggest the divine reality which is beyond and above all that we can know and give a name to. Moreover, a friend, a High Priest and a Saviour continually intercedes for us.
As a good friend, though, He does not forsake us. On the contrary, He multiplies His gifts to us. He fills those who believe in Him with many gifts. First, you have the Scriptures which speak of Him. Then you have the Apostles, who tell us everything about His person and His story. We have also the Sacraments which continue His action, and even, in the case of the Holy Eucharist, His presence. And of course we have the community of the believers who share in His life and His death, who hand over what they have received from Him, give witness to Him, and are His mystical body, the Church.
All these gifts are made one reality in the gift par excellence: the Holy Spirit. We heard it in the Gospel: “I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high”. And in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles: “Wait for the promise of the Father […] for before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit”. The Holy Spirit is the Gift of gifts: the one Gift given in all the gifts that make our life Christian. He is like a water washing sin and impurity off us. He is like an unction penetrating our inmost being. He is Someone dwelling in the Church – among us – and Someone within us: the divine Guest of our soul.
Today’s good news is that Jesus ascends to heaven precisely in order to send us the Spirit – the promise of the Father, the power from on high, the baptism of fire and love, the One who can heal our wounds and open our hearts to the fullness of love. Jesus’ Ascension, His parting from our visible world, is the revelation of the divine power which draws Him to His Father – and with Him our world, all that we are, all that we can hope for.
Through Christ’s Ascension, we are given to deepen our sense of what can be seen – the creation of God, the faces around us, the part of human history and drama we share in – and of what we cannot see but nevertheless is a real and true component of the mystery of our life. We, Christians, should be expert at seeing the visible world in the light of the invisible one; and, at the same time, able to recognise the invisible world beckoning to us in all sorts of ways.
In Notre Dame de Paris, a series of sculptures around the choir feature the life of our Lord from his annunciation to His resurrection. When you get to the last panel, you are surprised to find only a frame around an empty space. The scene which should normally be represented is the Ascension of the Lord. Whatever the explanation for this missing scene, it is possible to understand it not as an accident, but as a choice. In His Ascension, Jesus becomes invisible. The frame has no image to propose to you. Nevertheless, it invites you to watch more attentively. If you look around you, you meet the Church, the Temple of the Spirit and the Body of Christ. If you look beyond the visible – through the frame, as it were – you begin to see “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, not the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him, [what] God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” (1 Cor 2:9-10)
Jesus enters today the “depths of God” – the highest point and the deepest one, at the same time! He reaches the place from where the Father looks at us and sends to us their common Spirit. To see the invisible is nothing else than to meet the gaze of our Father looking at us and blessing us in His eternal love. As Jesus himself told Mary Magdalene: “Go to my brethren and say to them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (Jn 20:17).
Receive the Spirit and see the Father: you are eternally loved.