Perhaps Ascension can
help us to pierce past this gloom to some celestial clarity in the horizon.
Firstly, it is a
blessing that this Solemnity which marks 40 days after the Resurrection is
still known to us as the Ascension THURSDAY[1]
instead of it being transferred to the 7th Sunday of Easter. The commanding
rationale for the dominical translation is pastoral, that is, to allow the busy
person, who otherwise cannot attend, to fulfil his or her obligation. In many
of these Protestant-majority countries[2]
which has made this move, the result has proven to be a disappointment.
In fact, the attempt
to encourage better attendance at Mass has had an opposite effect. Note that it
is a fallacy that all the time-saving modern amenities we have at our finger
tips are supposed to increase the standard of living. What follows is that we are
by far the most stressed generation.[3] It
is ironical, no? With so much time saved from manual exertion, when everything
is at a push of a button, yet we struggle to fulfil our religious obligation.
Perhaps, what is more deleterious is, with the relaxation of practices that
shape our Catholic identity, we are also losing our religious character.[4]
This process of structuring convenience for religious practices has actually
morphed into a religion of convenience. Convenience is now the true religion
for of the world.
This is not a
criticism of the reaction of the government or anyone in particular but an
attempt to understand why we, individually or collectively, have acted the way
we have thus far. It is not inconceivable that this religion of convenience plays
a significant but subconscious part in the handling of this pandemic. As
mentioned earlier, an expression of this religion of convenience is our focus
on the quality of life. We are always on the look out to improve the “quality
of life” forgetting that it is not the same as a “life of quality”.
For the Ascension to
be meaningful, it belongs within the definition of a life of quality. What does
it mean? Firstly, we need to clarify that the quality of life and a life of
quality are not mutually exclusive, but one has to be ordered to the other.
Even where the quality of life is absent, one is not absolved of the need to
strive for a life of quality. No one is exempted from the nobility or
excellence of character.
In terms of the life
of quality or excellence in morality, we have to look at the past. In this
consideration, there is one way in which Catholics differ from the Protestant
experience. A guiding myth of the Protestant ethos is that they look at the
past from a perspective in which time and space have a “corroding” effect on
reality. They see the Christian experience or history through the lens of a
past uncontaminated. What this means is that the Catholic Church cannot be the
Church founded by Christ because she has been deformed[5] by
time and space and clearly this disfigurement is evidenced by the many accreted
traditions the Church has, which according to the Protestants, are
unscriptural.
In a sense, this same
“myth” actually undergirds the many attempts at righting the wrongs of history.
The effort or this pining for that Edenic past is possibly what
drove the Communists to impose their social experiment on humanity. They are
not alone. All efforts at trying to “recreate” or “re-engineer”
the pristine past will fail because they do not take into consideration the
passage of time, not so much the erosion or corrosion of time, but rather the
reality of sin. But, because history is also graced, this reality is tempered
by the possibility of redemption and as such the resurrection and assumption[6] into
heaven. Without realising it, the myth of this pristine past renders the coming
of Jesus rather superfluous.[7]
Time[8]
and therefore history, is the medium for Jesus to be present to us through the
Sacraments which He left for us.
The Ascension cannot
be a return to a past. We have to stop thinking of Eden in a wistful manner.
What if Adam and Eve had not sinned?[9]
Would that not be good? The point is, even without sin, there is a goodness
about Eden which is not complete. How so? Sacred Scripture in describing
creation speaks of “God saw that it was good”. (Gen 1: 10, 12,
etc). Yet when Adam was formed, as part of God’s good creation, God recognised
Adam’s incompleteness. Even after Eve was created to complete Adam, still
creation was unfulfilled or unfinished because “all creation has been
groaning for the Son of God”. (Rom 8:22).
Thus, the Ascension
cannot be a restoration of a past undefiled. Instead, it is an elevation, an ascent
of grace, to the future. If you like, the Garden of Eden, God’s wonderful
creation, was just a stepping stone. We are not and will never be returning
there. What the Ascension represents is a new creation in which our
relationship with God is restored[10] for
it shows us a different picture even as He disappears from the sight of the
Apostles. The Ascension recognises the past as past but promises a future which
is more than what we had in the first place. If we continue to hanker or hunger
for a vision of the past, we shall never be able to envision heaven because the
past will always be what we think, what we see and what we know. The purity of
the past is nothing more than an imposition from our standpoint. Therefore, the
Ascension in a way destroys the myth of the pristine past because it gives us
perspective into the future. As Pope St Leo once explained in a homily for the
Ascension, “What was visible in our Saviour has passed over into His
Sacraments”.[11] Through
the passage of time, the Sacraments are Christ’s personal assist for us to make
concrete a life of quality. They are needed because we are here not focused on
the quality of life but rather through the Sacraments, we may embrace a life of
quality so that where Jesus our Head has gone, we can follow.
[1] This
tradition goes back to the 4th Century.
[2] or
where Catholics are a minority and therefore, Catholic Solemnities have no
public recognition.
[3] We
all are so stressed by the pandemic because the measure of who we are is
“activity” and the lack of it has caused many to feel the loss of stature or
status—no work = nobody.
[4] The
more we make it easier to practise the faith, the easier it is to abandon it.
[5] Now
you understand why this protesting movement is called the Reformation.
[6] A reference to us. Only Jesus ascended.
[7] There
is no need to come, we can reconstruct our Eden here.
[8] And space.
[9] O happy fault. O necessary sin of Adam
which won for us so great a Redeemer. O felix culpa, quæ talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem.
[10] On the 3rd Day He rose again.
The 3rd Day = the 8th Day or Sunday, the 1st
Day of the new creation of grace.
[11] Sermo.
74.2: PL 54, 398
