Scripture Reflections for the Ascension of the Lord

“Through our everyday lives, we can choose small things, small witnesses, to prove in many ways that God is truly alive and that we are witnesses to that life”

“Resurrection is not just a return to the kind of life we have now, life in this world. It is the beginning of a new world, a human bodily life in the Kingdom of God.”

“The promise of the Ascension is that since Christ has been exalted to the heights of heaven, we too can share in this exaltation”

“The message of the Apocalypse, like the message of the Ascension, is the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of God in Jesus Christ, such that every power that is not yet in thrall to the Lord of love must in the end disintegrate and pass away”

“since we are incorporated into him by faith and baptism we are members of his Body, which means that where he has gone we shall also follow. That is a promise.”

“Where Christ has gone, we hope to follow. Our newly found humanity is properly lived in the intimate presence of God. Christ’s invisibility to our eyes is a measure of the bliss we cannot comprehend.”

“There is no one present who is another me or another you and yet here we all are, perfectly diverse and deeply loved as God's own”

“With the spirit of Jesus in them, they will start to bring Heaven to Earth and Earth to Heaven. They will become agents of this reconciliation.”

"People sometimes give the impression that Jesus was a holy man of God, but through the centuries the Church imposed on him a strange and alien identity, as a member..."

"The Blessed Trinity – the mystery of mysteries! Perhaps, with the help of a few lines taken from a 1910 operetta, we might come to a little understanding of what..."

"'Go, make disciples of all the nations, baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit'. Recently I was returning from baptizing a baby...."

"When the eleven disciples were summoned by Jesus to the mountain in Galilee to meet him, in Galilee where he had begun his public ministry, they were acting under obedience...."

"It may be true that the 'mystery' of the Trinity is not a mystery of the Agatha Christie kind, not something hidden to be puzzled out, but something revealed to..."

"Friends, Trinity Sunday serves as a wonderful opportunity to unpack the life-giving relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Every time we make the sign of the cross, we..."

"The Trinity is not simply a theological connundrum for scholars to fuss about. It stands at the very heart of our faith, since it expresses the fact that God is..."

"On the feast of the Trinity, we reflect on the uniquely Christian definition of God: God is love. Love is not something that God does, or an attribute that God..."

"Another homily from Fr. Robert Barron and Word on Fire Catholic Ministries."

“How will the Holy Spirit come for you? I don’t know if it will happen for you, but it is happening for me: when I enter into the hearts and griefs of others, God comes, softens and heals hearts, and fosters unity.”

“The Ascension of Jesus is like the Incarnation of Jesus, not only because in one he comes and in the other he goes but because it shows us God has the will and power to unite humanity and physical things, the created order, to himself”

“It is often said that Acts is the story of the Church, which is not wrong. But from beginning (see Acts 1:4!) to the end (see Acts 28:31!) Acts is about the kingdom, of which the visible Church is the earthly manifestation.”

“Today, we are the witnesses to the promise by the way we live our lives—awesome and frightening at the same time. It is up to each of us to decide what more we can do given our personal potential to bring the love of God to our families and communities and beyond.”

“Jesus didn’t come back to life, he went forwards to life – the new life of the new creation”

“On account of Christ’s ascension into heaven we now know that the true place of our existing – our true destiny as human beings – is God himself”

“Jesus has entered God’s space, a different kind of space, with a different kind of time. God’s space and ours, what we call heaven and earth, are different but not far from each other, different but not distant.”

“The mystery of love and intimacy contains that paradox: To remain present to someone we love we have to sometimes be absent, in ways big and small. In the paradox of love, we can only fully bless each other when we go away.”

“what we mean is, no, he's gone into this higher realm, he's actually closer to us, more available to us than he was before”

“Jesus had to leave because what he wanted were witnesses, not warriors”

“Liturgically, he presents eternally to the Father the great sacrifice of the cross and we join ourselves to that sacrifice. Do you see now why the Ascension matters so much for the life of the Church?”

“think of the ascension of Jesus not as his going away but his going to a place of command. Where he is now going to direct the great work of his church.”