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Our Sunday is ensconced in the novena days after the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord and the mighty day of Pentecost. Church’s liturgical calendar gives us … gave us, at least, until about 1970 an Octave for Pentecost was removed which allows us to contemplate the mystery of the Holy Spirit’s descent from different angles. However, in this case we also have a novena, nine days, to consider the Ascension in view of Pentecost to come. In Latin, there is a word which we heard often in the recent past, before the conclave that elected Pope Leo IV: novendialis… the nine day period of mourning after a pope’s death. In ancient Rome, the novendialis had a negative overtone, because it was also the period of religious observance after a prodigy which predicted misfortune, and it was associate with the funeral banquet on the ninth day. Consider that Christ told the Apostles that should not grieve at his departure because they were going to receive the Spirit. Christ was the death of death, and He turned mourning inside out. In any event, the Apostles had nine days between Ascension and Pentecost and so do we, and we have the advantage of knowing what would happen (for the next couple of millennia) when they did not.
Each mystery of the Lord provides infinite grist for the mills of our minds. This Sunday we are firmly within the original novena, a forerunning octave, during which we pray for an increase of the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit as well as the implications for us of the Ascension of the Lord. Three implications come directly to mind.
First, when the Lord ascended to the Father, so did our humanity, which from the moment of his Incarnation at the Annunciation is in an indestructible bond with Christ’s divinity. Our humanity, seated in the Risen Jesus at the right hand of the Father, should be a constant source of hope in time of prosperity and peace as well as in trials and troubles.
Second, we who desire a relationship with the Lord must, like the early Church, learn to relate to Him as He truly is, not as He isn’t. The disciples in Jesus lifetime, had Him physically present to them. After the Resurrection and Ascension, they had to relate to Him no longer physically there with them in the flesh, but rather as He was truly present to them in the “breaking of the bread” in their Eucharistic observances. Christ told them “do this” and you can be sure that they did. They had to relate to Christ also present in the persons of those who were in need. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). This challenge is constantly before our eyes.
Third, Christ ascended as the High Priest to present perpetually His Sacrifice to the Father. We use the images of physical locations, such as the Father’s “right hand”. So, we can speak of Christ in the heavenly temple at an altar beyond space and time where He renews His self-oblation without ceasing. This means that His High priestly action is in eternity and not just in points of historical time. By the Ascension, all the transformative mysteries of the Passion and Resurrection are still available to us. The action and effects of the Last Supper, continuous with Calvary and the empty tomb, are not bound by clocks, calendars or by geographical location. The High Priest in Heaven guarantees that we can have many Masses at many altars in many places at the same time. Christ is not just in this Host and then in that Host but in every Host, not just on this altar only now, but on every altar. He simultaneously is available to us in thousands of Hosts around the globe or in thousands of Host in the same church building. There isn’t just one priest now acting in Christ’s person, but many persons who are His priests who act in persona Christi.
Can we gain some additional insight into the Ascension/Pentecost mystery by drilling into the context of the first Ascension and Pentecost pairing? After the Ascension the Apostles were waiting for something to happen, since Jesus had told them to “wait for the promise of the Father” and that they would be “baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:4-5). However, this was in the days shortly before the Jewish Spring Festival of Shavuoth, “Weeks”, or in Greek Pentecost, the “50th feast”.
The count of forty days would certainly not have been lost on the Apostles. They knew their salvation history. We also know that, after His resurrection, the Lord taught them man things. You can imagine Him explaining the significance of “forty” in salvation history. After all, He opened up all Scripture about Himself when, after rising, He walked with the disciples to Emmaus. Forty days from the tomb He had ascended into Heaven in a cloud of glory, a sign of God’s divine presence which once settled on the tent of meeting in the wilderness and later filled the Temple. They must have known that something was up and that it might happen on Shavuoth. Already the city was revving up for the hundreds of thousands of people who were obliged to ascend to Jerusalem. They probably would have tried to remember everything that Christ ever told them about His mission, going over details, trying to piece the puzzle together, praying for insight.
The Apostles were 1st century Jews in Jerusalem. They had seen the Lord Ascend, forty days after His Resurrection, the first fruits festival which was the day after the sabbath (Sunday) after Passover which was the feast of Bikkurim, the feast of the first fruits of the harvest.
Jesus was the first fruit of the true and new harvest. They had to be speculating about the upcoming 50-day feast of Shavuoth after Bikkurim. What would they have known?
Some context helps. Shavuoth is a spring harvest festival. Like all Jewish feasts, and our own Christian feasts, they simultaneously look backward to commemorate some great event in salvation history, and they look forward to its eventual fulfillment by God. In this case, for Pentecost in the 1st century they would have celebrated how Moses and the twelve tribes arrived at Mount Sinai after Passover after passing though the waters (Exodus 19). Three days after their arrival the fiery cloud of glory descended, and God was with Moses.
The Apostles, by Christ’s intention twelve, looking back to the twelve tribes, almost certainly reflected on Jesus as the new Moses, ascending to the presence of God and awaiting the descent of a fire cloud of glory. Jesus had commanded them to stay in Jerusalem and wait to be clothed in power. What did that mean, clothed in power? Like Moses on the Mount? Jesus had told them at the Last Supper, “John baptized with water, you shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit.”
This is the Holy Spirit that made them burst out to preach and baptize.
This is the same Holy Spirit lavished upon you and in you at baptism. The same was confirmed in you and deepened in you. This is the same Spirit whom you reject when you sin, by omission or commission. The same who returns with the state of grace in the confessional and who deepens in you through good Holy Communions and living devoutly, especially though self-emptying. The more you get out of the way, the more the Holy Spirit can abide in you and manifest his gifts and fruits.