The Ascension to the final frontier of the Living or the Plunge to the uberworld of the dead
The mystery of the Ascension touches on how big reality really is and it is therefore of Cosmic significance. One of the myths of our modern times is revealed in the series called ‘Star Trek’ which also considers the issue of what is the final frontier. It articulates not just the pioneering spirit of the United States, but also the aspiration of scientific humanism to go cosmic – a secular messianic zeitgeist. The mission statement of this aspiration and pioneering spirit is full of hope of man’s potential to venture into the ‘ultimate’ frontier, as it is put in the opening of each programme of ‘Star Trek - The Next Generation’:
‘Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship ‘Enterprise’. Its on-going mission to explore new worlds, to seek out new civilisations. To boldly go where no-one has gone before.’
Star Trek belongs to a very modern literary genre called Science Fiction. It was Hugo Gernsback who, when he launched the AMAZING STORIES magazine in America back in April 1926, created a new genre called Science Fiction ushering in the age of the SF papers, comics and books that have come to be a major genre that has also invaded Television, Cinema and Play Stations. However, there had been earlier works in the 19th Century that could be considered science fiction such as the writings of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. But these publications were part and parcel of the mainstream of literature. To date there is only C. S. Lewis that has Science Fiction as a medium for portraying Christian ideas in his trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Voyage to Venus, and That Hideous Strength; although there is the SF novel called ‘The Mote in God's Eye’ by Larry Niven andJerry Pournelle that has an interesting slant on how a Christian Empire engages alien life. The TV series Babylon 5, created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, similarly has interesting elements that suggest an openness to the religious dimension, something that has not disappeared in these examples of a science fiction future.
The word ‘Cosmos’ has a number of meanings. It could mean what the Biblical sources understood by it: an understanding that develops from Genesis through to the Book of Revelation. It could mean what the Christian Tradition has understood by it: an understanding that developed from the Apologists down to our present times. It could mean what Moderns have understood by it: an understanding that has developed from the 19th Century Science of Newton to that understood by 20th Century Science. Or it could also mean what contemporary ‘mythology’ understands by it: an understanding that has developed from the world of H. G. Wells down to modern science fiction. The word ‘Cosmos’ actually means ‘the rational order of the world’ but it can be understood in its secular sense, as in the word ‘Universe’, or it can be understood in its broadest and deepest – theological - meaning, ‘Creation’. In the latter we would include all of creation, both visible and invisible, material and spiritual, corporeal and angelic. But we need to begin somewhere, so in the spirit of a new evangelization, we will begin with what many of our contemporaries have imagined it to mean and go from there.
On Ascension Thursday we celebrate the Cosmic reality of Christ and the cosmic effect of his work of redemption. With Pentecost the Church is given a mission that is also Cosmic such that we can say, in response to the above mission statement of Star Trek and Scientific humanism, the following:
‘The Kingdom of Heaven! the final frontier. These are the voyagers of the pilgrim Church. Its on-going mission to explore new worlds, to seek out new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before…and bring the Gospel!
The Mystery of the Ascension brings to an end the life and ministry of Jesus on earth and begins, as we see in the Acts of the Apostles, the life and ministry of the Church under the reign and kingship of Christ. The Lord Jesus goes to a place of command and this is what is meant by the words ‘he is seated at the right hand of the Father’ and this is why the angels ask the disciples who watched Jesus ascend:
"Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven."
A mystery that calls us to lift up our hearts and minds in prayer and worship to a new kind of seeing, a new kind of thinking, for a new kind of vision which is found by living in the Spirit. This Life-in-the-Spirit cannot be comprehended by the man or woman of the flesh! The mystery of Ascension reveals the objective basis of being born from above by water and the Spirit that happens to every person who was baptised but which each person has to personally appropriate and live, intentionally, in the Spirit. How? By becoming disciples fit for mission who are fitted out for that mission by being members of the Church, formed by the Church, serving in the Church so as to acquire the virtues, the character and the discipline to do the Mission wherever the Lord sows and sends them!
Simply put, do we live in the Spirit of Christ or do we live for the spirit of the age, the zeitgeist of the world? Do we fool ourselves into trying to have one foot in Christ's camp and the other in this world's camp? Thus, living a false consciousness that wants to have its cake and eat it, by a way of life which fears to decide one way or another and so prefers to sit on the fence. Here many a Catholic settles foran insurance Catholicism that bets both ways just in case one or the other is true. It is a soul that Jesus calls Lukewarm because it lacks that courage to love whole heartedly and give without counting the cost. Hear how the Lord deals with such a lukewarm church, the Catholic church in Laodicea to whom the Lord spoke these words in the book of the Apocalypse (3:15-20):
‘I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.
Indeed, all the sacraments presuppose we have the intentionality of a disciple for sacraments are for disciples and not for MacDonald, Tesco or Insurance Catholics who are dead to the Spirit. They are dead to the Spirit because of unrepentant sin and because deep down they live for this world! Something they choose not to face up to but would rather pretend to be Catholic on the outside while they are dead to God on the inside. Spirit led Catholics, on the other hand, are intentional disciples and are dead to the world but alive to the Holy Spirit.
The Mystery of the Ascension calls us to ‘lift up our hearts’ by being born from above:
“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” [John 3:3]
What does this mean? It means firstly, it means having a new mind and a new vision of life. It is a life and mind that grows into eternal life through the Word of God and the sacraments, beginning with baptism: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit “.
All of which requires us to personally co operate with this gift or grace of supernatural life and that means to live intentionally this life and be joined to Christ in and through the life and work of his Church: to be living stones not dead stones.
In the womb of baptism, we are born from above by the Father who sent his Son in the power of the Spirit through the life of mother Church for as St Cyprian said, ‘no one can have God as Father without having the Church as mother.’ Like our natural parents, the Church is God’s way of bringing forth a new creation which is born, nurtured, protected and guided in a supernatural life so as to become fit and able to enjoy eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven. God’s ‘technology’ for doing this is called the sacramental life which makes ego-centred-selves who die to themselves into spiritual other centred persons fit for God’s domain, the Kingdom of heaven!
We are to live the Mystery of the Ascension by growing from the inside out and by growing up to heaven through these three steps found in the life of a parish which is the vineyard of the Lord:
by being formed as disciples [through apologetics, catechetics, sacramentalisation and mystagogia];
by serving as disciples through the gift of our time, our treasures and our talents to serve in the vineyard of the Lord;
and thus having that confidence and wisdom to go out on mission as disciples, so that our lives become real and everlasting stories of a new creation who as such are growing up to heaven by teaching and moving all those we meet on earth.
It is for this reason that the Church is our Mother who gives birth to the glory of the adopted sons and daughters of God [Rom 8:19] in and through the sacraments. Baptism and Penance are the sacraments of the dead for the dead are those dead in sin and it is these two sacraments that bring them back to life. On this basis are the other sacraments given. For you cannot give these other sacraments to the dead! You can only be given these other 5 sacraments if you are no longer dead in sin. Sacraments make disciples and they are not for automatons nor for mere consumers nor for lukewarm and the un-committed!
It is here that the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Confirmation brings about the work in us of being evangelised so that we can evangelise others! This is what we mean by praying to St Michael for a new Evangelisation after every Mass because the world and its powers [infernal and secular] will oppose us and we need the Chief and Prince of the Heavenly Host to assist us in this most holy of wars! A war between the living and the dead!
