As you are probably aware, the author of today’s gospel account in Luke and the author of the book of the Acts of the Apostles are one-in-the same: Luke – a Greek-speaking Christian and presumed convert and companion of Paul’s. Since the book of Acts is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke, it would have been interesting today to flip the order of the 1st reading and the gospel so that we could have the experience of a continuous reading, of sorts. However, given that we just completed our Apostolic “Visit”, it would probably not be a good idea to play around with the Order of the Mass!

These 2 Lucan accounts of the same event, however, also present what seems to be a contradiction in his Ascension stories: the Gospel account of the “ascension” takes place on the same day as the resurrection of Jesus; the Acts Ascension account occurs 40 days after the resurrection event. Scholars, however, note that in Luke’s mind, it’s not a contradiction at all. It is his way of presenting one event from two different points of view: the gospel account, pairing the Resurrection and Ascension together, serves as the climax of Jesus’ work on earth; the Acts account, after 40 days of the disciples’ witnessing appearances of Jesus after the resurrection, serves as a prelude to the Church’s mission in the world, coming to fullness in next week’s feast of Pentecost.

“Why are you standing there looking at the sky?”

During the Easter vigil homily, Fr. Michael Garcia helped me begin to reflect on this feast of the Ascension when he mentioned that “the Acts of the Apostles begin with the resurrection of Jesus.” I know that Michael was using Acts as a noun, referring to the actual book that appears in the Christian scriptures after the gospels. But for our purposes today, and in using the perspective of this Acts passage as a prelude to the church’s mission on earth, I’d like you to think of the “acts” of the Apostles as a verb instead of a noun.

If this is so, it gives a new twist to what the two messengers who appeared “dressed in white garments” meant when they said, “Why are you standing there looking at the sky?” In other words, “don’t just stand around: do something, take action, get going!”

During most of this Easter season, what have we been doing? From where I sit, we’ve been pretty busy, but we’ve also been very distracted due to the events leading up to our Visit last week. Even though we made great attempts to keep the day-to-day routine of our lives together “normal,”…whatever that means…things were different: we were asking lots of questions, sharing what little information each of us had and tossing around a lot of “what-ifs.” The bulletin board became a hub of activity as people posted and read…it seemed almost hourly…editorials and articles from the NY Times or National Catholic Reporter, notes and letters of support from friends near-and-far, a flurry of e-mails coming in and going out to cyberspace – all in an attempt to help us put pieces of information together; all in an attempt to help us make sense out of what was really happening; all in an attempt to give us some answers. We were, I’d say, a bit “on edge,” because we didn’t understand; we didn’t know what was really going to happen.

That experience of ours was probably just a tiny glimpse of what it was like for the disciples of Jesus as they tried to get their heads and hearts around the resurrection event and Jesus’ appearances in the garden, on the road, on the beach. Then Jesus “blessed them”…a scriptural reference indicating that Jesus was now handing on his mission to his followers...and left them on their own.

“Why are you standing there looking at the sky?”

Our visitors have left, and our life goes on. So now what? What will we do: stand there and look at the sky, or get up, take action and get to work on the mission of the Church in our world? OUR mission is reverence: Through common prayer, stewardship, hospitality and mutual respect, we seek to find and honor God present in each person and in all created things. So, on this Ascension Sunday, let’s get back to our work of serving where there is need.

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