Doubt and Awe

7th Sunday Easter: Ascension – Doubt and Awe

For forty days they watched him carefully. Listened so that the eye of their hearts could really be enlightened by his message, his mission …

This unassuming carpenter from out-of-nowhere turns their lives upside down, promising a Kingdom of true freedom and mercy found only in Him. He heals the sick. Fights religious ignorance. Loves the outcasts. Promises to feed them with his own body and blood.

And then he dies on a cross, a criminal among common criminals.

We’re told by numerous witnesses that he reappears after his death, turning-up in ways and places that weren’t expected: on the beach; near the tomb; on a road leaving Jerusalem. These stories don’t always seem to gel with one another, either … proving that something truly happened post-Calvary that deeply affected the band of followers – many fewer now – that did truly change their hearts.

The Beatitudes made more sense now, as did the teachings about forgiveness and humble service. They looked with compassion — not scorn or pity — on the lowly and forgotten, and then did something about it. They began to talk more intently about that was burning within them, although they were still very much afraid.

And, perhaps most importantly, the suffering they endured – much of it brought on by their own sinfulness and abandonment of Christ at his hour of need – became the very source of their renewed faith – their authentic faith – in God.

Those 40 Easter days – whatever they looked like for the original disciples – gave them a powerful experience with the Risen Lord that began to build the framework of the Body of Christ – the living Church – for which He died.

I’m sure they thought He’d stay forever as He was now – as we, too, will one day be in glory.

And then – just like that – He up and left them.

“Why?” they asked. And they must have looked somewhat dumbfounded as it happened. As Luke reports in the Acts of the Apostles: they just stood there looking up at the sky.

Frozen in fear, perhaps. Maybe awe, too.

(Catholics are usually both/and, not either/or people – so this is fitting.)

Thus, in fear and awe they are trying to figure out this new wrinkle in their journey of faith: this Jesus is alive; dead; risen; and now gone again. What gives?

Everything, as it turns out.

Christ gives us everything.

And so, in order to do this, He had to return to his Father in Heaven.

This feast of the Ascension is important, although often misunderstood, for the very fact that Christ – who is the Son of God and one with God the Father – had to return to the Kingdom where we are one day meant to go.

He leads the way. He intercedes for us there. And He ultimately goes so that the Spirit may come.

But he also ascends for one other reason: if he didn’t, we’d do nothing.

Let’s be completely honest here: we’d be clingy, as Mary Magdalen was in the Garden. We’d get lazy, expecting Him to take care of it all without us. We’d be demanding of Him, and never use the gifts God gave us in the first place.

And, honestly, our love for God probably wouldn’t be sincere.

So many of the spiritual masters and saints often make this point about the journey of faith: love only becomes real when it is tried by fire and tested in the darkness. Simply put: love really isn’t genuine if it’s easy. 

Otherwise, we’d just take, and never give.

We’d expect to be waited-on, and never sacrifice ourselves.

We’d make the world all about us, and never others.

That’s what happens when love is “easy.”

Because, truthfully, if any of those statements apply to us above, we’re really not loving, at least not in the way Christ challenges us to love.

And He certainly does challenge.

The Gospel of Matthew ends with the very words we read in today’s Gospel: “Go, make disciples, baptize and teach.”

In other words, let your love for God – and His love in you –compel you to act.

Let that genuine love – forged in the crosses carried and in the moments of fear and doubt – be what we use to fulfill the great commission that each of us has been given at our Baptism.

Priests and popes, nuns and missionaries aren’t the only ones called to live the Ascension message. Every one of us – we the Church begun at Calvary and Pentecost – are all called to take the power that the Risen Christ has given us and use it in His Name to remind the world of its dignity…

To show each and every person that he or she is a beloved child of God, no exceptions.

And to live in such a way that your life and mine becomes this beacon of light and hope when the forces of darkness and despair seem to encroach. It can feel that way often, especially these days.

But if the Ascension story tells us anything, it is this: we are called to build the Kingdom right in the spot we are standing, and we must not be afraid to start building now.

Little ways often make the strongest foundations: pray for someone you haven’t thought of in a while; forgive someone through God’s grace; reach out this week to someone who needs to hear your voice.



Don’t wait, and never be afraid. For Christ says: “Behold, I am with you always until the end of the age.”