Given at the Mass for New Catholics in Westminster Cathedral on Saturday 11 May 2024
My brothers and sisters,
Today we stand at a special moment in the rhythm of the liturgical life of the Church.
On Thursday we celebrated the ascent of Jesus into heaven and next Sunday we rejoice in the coming of the Holy Spirit, the great gift given for the life of the Church. In this moment, then, we reflect on the wonderful gift of faith we have received and how we are to live it in our daily lives.
The experience of the Ascension was pivotal for the first disciples. We heard in the Gospel for Ascension Thursday that at this very moment the disciples had no more questions. Now they understood. Now they could see plainly who Jesus really was. They could grasp the enormity of their experience of him, the greatness of the destiny that awaited them in heaven and the purpose in life that was being unfolded before their very eyes. Now they understood. They understood that everything they were, everything they were to do, was rooted in him, the Risen and Ascended One.
And the same is true for us too.
It is in the light of the Lord’s Ascension that we understand, by faith, the destiny that awaits us. We know the ultimate purpose and goal for which we have been created. Pope St Leo the Great said that the Ascension was ‘that day on which our poor human nature was carried up, in Christ, to the very throne of God.’ That is our destiny!
Today we remember that in baptism we are bound to Christ, joined to him. We remember that in the Church we are his Body. We remember that the Body and the Head are one, they cannot be separated. And so we recall the great proclamation that ‘Where the Head has gone, there the Body is sure to follow’. This is our good news.
Yet the Ascension was also a parting. Jesus leaves the company of the disciples. They now have to live without his presence among them. That is difficult.
But Pope St Leo explained the presences of Christ in this way:
‘He did not leave His Father when he came down to earth. Nor does he abandon his disciples when he ascended into heaven.’
Rather, at this moment his true identity is revealed: the Eternal Word of God, from all eternity, the Son of the Father.
Pope Leo explained that now our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments of the Church, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
As you well understand, then, it is the celebration of the sacraments that sustains the life of the Church, the circulation of divine life from Head to Body. Our devotion to the sacraments, then, is our life-blood.
With this abiding presence of the Redeemer, faith does not fail. Hope is not shaken. Charity does not grow cold.
This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. We are proud to profess it.
So how are we to live, here and now, this faith in the victory of Our Blessed Lord, our hope in our share in that victory and the charity which gives expression to these realities of faith and hope?
The readings of our Mass today provide a framework for our way forward.
The first Reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, makes it plain that action is a key note of our living faith. We have decisions to make. We have choices to be fashioned about how we behave, about our priorities. These decisions are to be shaped by the faith and hope we profess.
In the figure of St Peter we have a symbol of this dimension of our faith. He took the initiative. He led the prayers and established the method by which this particular decision was to be finalised. This helps us to understand the role of the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. He leads us in putting faith into practice, in interpreting its consequences in the constantly changing circumstances of our turbulent world. And his leadership points us constantly to the work of charity, to our response to those most in need today.
Then there is a second figure to help us fashion our way of living. This is disciple John, called the Beloved. John is the one who put his head on the breast of Jesus and sat there, held in his embrace. This quiet repose, this profound contemplation is a vital part of our living faith, too. It is, we can say, an anticipation of heaven where we will be face to face with God, with our Blessed Lord, in a presence which satisfies every longing of our hearts.
Such moments of quiet repose in the presence of our Lord are a crucial part of our daily life of faith. Everyday there is to be a time and space for us simply to be in God’s presence, to rest and be at peace no matter what else may be pressing upon us.
There is a strong hint of this in the words of the Gospel that we have just heard. Jesus is speaking of his coming crucifixion. Yet here, in the Gospel of John, he speaks not of its suffering but rather of it being an act of consecration, an act which displays his unity with God, his holiness. And Jesus prays the same for us, that we will be made holy, brought closer to God, consecrated, through all the trials and suffering that we will have to face.
This can be so only if we stay close to him, only if we remain bound to Jesus. Otherwise, as he tells us, we remain part of the world and will react to difficulties and pain in the way of the world, seeking someone to blame for our misfortune, establishing that it is someone else’s fault, leaving us simply full of resentment. This is the way of the world. It is not the pathway of holiness.
Today, then, we hear this call to life, to life in Christ, to the life of faith in the fulness of the Church. We are called to act in love, to stay rooted in prayer so that, in the words of the prayer of the Mass today ‘we may experience, as he promised, his abiding presence among us’ and come to the eternal glory he has promised.
Amen.