A blessed feast of the Ascension to all our readers, when Christ ascended body and soul back to the Father, whence He was sent, to that Trinitarian life that is His by nature. The Ascension was (and is in most of the rest of the Church) celebrated on Thursday of the sixth week of Easter, the fortieth day after the resurrection of Christ, and nine days before Pentecost, thus comprising the beginning of the earliest ‘novena’. (That it has been moved to replace the seventh Sunday of Easter signifies a diminution in our Christian culture). Still, if you are able and amenable, begin that novena to the Holy Spirit now, praying for the gifts and power of the Paraclete, so we may truly live an ‘Apostolic’ life.
This would also be the memorial of Our Lady of Fatima, commemorating the first of the visions of the Virgin Mary to the three shepherd children in 1917, the hundredth anniversary of which we celebrated last year, fitting in this month dedicated to Mary.
So rejoice on this day, for although Christ and His mother have left us in their incarnate forms, they ‘have not left us orphans’, for they both still exist, glorified, body and soul, in that beatific state we call heaven, which is not ‘far away’, nor ‘far above’, but here all around us, invisible to our eyes and senses, but more real than the things we do see and sense.
Let not our hearts be troubled, therefore, neither let them be afraid. Rather, have courage and good cheer, as Christ prepares a ‘place for us’, and for all those who, God willing, respond to His truth and mercy, for whatever we now ask in the Father’s name will be granted to us.