Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Happy Feast of the Ascension! Today, we Jesus’ ascent into heaven, bringing our renewed, restored, healed and perfected humanity into the very heart of the Real and enthroning it at the right hand of the Father. The Ascension is a deepening of the mystery of the resurrection by which we understand that not only has God assumed our humanity in Jesus Christ in order to overcome death and sin from the inside of the human adventure, but that the humanity he assumed has been divinized and made to partake of his own divine life. The humanity Jesus shares with us, that he gladly received from his Mother Mary—that humanity, our humanity, is situated at the center of the still point of the turning world, at the center of that Reality of Love whose “center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.“ And through it, through him, we’re also made partakers of the divine life and are seated with him and in him on Love’s high throne.

Our Office Reading from Matthew reveals another dimension to this ascension that might be easy to miss. You might recall from a couple weeks ago how invested Matthew is in revealing Jesus’ story as a renewed version of the story of the people of Israel—there’s a sojourning in Egypt, a reference to the crossing of the Red Sea in Jesus’ baptism, a wandering in the desert for 40 days in which Jesus was tempted by the devil and prevailed by placing his trust completely in the Father…and if we read at the start of chapter 5 of Matthew, we’ll see Jesus seated on a mount a preaching, recalling Moses delivering the law at Sinai. And our Reading today begins, “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.” We’re back on the Mount, perhaps even the same Mount from chapter 5, the new Mount Sinai…

…but instead of delivering the law that, through the covenant, will form a nation and shape a people into a people of the promise, God’s own chosen people, Jesus inaugurates a New Kingdom that will encompass every nation through the blood of the new covenant and the new birth of baptism: a New Kingdom in which all people are able to join the family of God, to become people of the promise, God’s own people. And having inaugurated this new way of being-in-relationship with God—this New Kingdom, this New World—Jesus will ascend to his heavenly throne (an event we’ll hear about in our Gospel reading at Mass today) to reign.

Did you catch that amazing and subtle reversal? Or rather, it's less a reversal and more a completing of a circle: the law descends from God to Moses on the Mount, and Jesus who has faithfully fulfilled the law, ascends from the Mount to heaven, to the Father, to be the fulfillment of the law for us before the very Mercy Seat of God. The law has revealed the will of God to and for us, and God has, in Jesus Christ, mercifully and wonderfully become for us the perfect response to God’s own law that we ourselves could not make. The All-Good Lawgiver has himself fulfilled the law on behalf of the lawless, and in this act of surpassing and gratuitously gracious love, has shown (to paraphrase St Paul) that love has always been the fulfilling of the law, that love is always the fulfillment of the law, because Love always fulfills the law.

Beloved Friend, in Christ, our humanity—yours and mine—has become an eloquent articulation of that love. In Christ, our humanity is able to speak the love, to live the love, to be the love that fulfills the law, and that inaugurates a New Kingdom of Love. How will your humanity bear witness to that love today?

Happy Feast of the Ascension!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+