Mission Accomplished?

Today is the Feast of the Ascension.

And it's a holy day of obligation, depending on the diocese you live in (if not celebrated today, it will be commemorated on Sunday).  

But more than that, it's the summation of the Incarnation.

Before people get upset and begin to make their cases for the unequaled significance of Jesus' death and resurrection, let me make my point.

Perhaps the greatest modern theologian, Karl Rahner, invites us to consider it this way:

Instead of thinking about the Incarnation (Jesus, the Word become flesh) as a 33 year-long visit to a faraway land a long, long time ago, we ought to consider the Incarnation as a celebration of God's radical commitment of God's self to all humanity.

This changes everything. It changes the way we look at Jesus, the way we look at our Church, and the way we look at those outside our Church. But perhaps that's for another post.

The point is, the Incarnation is the fullness of God's revelation (self-communication), God's self-gift.

The Incarnation is God's radical commitment to all humanity because the Divine Word takes on human flesh, saves us from our sin, and restores us to right-relationship with our Creator and Lord. The Church gives witness to this event in history. And we, as members of the Church, are called to witness this event in history through the way we think, speak, and act in the world.

And all of this meets at the point in history we call the Ascension.
Today's Gospel [Matthew 28:16-20] tells us the story of the Ascension.

We learn many important lessons: principally among these, when the disciples saw Jesus, they worshipped him. They knew their friend and teacher was more than a friend and teacher.

And yet they also doubted. And how could they not? They were devout Jews, and Jews were (and are) monotheistic. Jesus' divinity was not an easy thing to synthesize with their idea of God. But they still worshipped.

The disciples (and, by proxy, we ourselves) are given a mission: to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

And the disciples (and we ourselves) are given hope: "I am with you always."
So we work to accomplish this goal: to share the Good News of Jesus Christ!

We live in the already: God is already among us; we are already doing God's work.
And we live in the not-yet. Jesus will come again; our work will always be incomplete.

And that's exactly how it's supposed to be, thanks to the Ascension.


Mission accomplished! (?)