The feast of the Ascension signifies the final days of the Easter season. Next Sunday, we will celebrate Pentecost when the Holy Spirit will give birth to the Church. Since the feast of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, we have been hearing the gospel speak of Jesus’ instructions to his disciples before completing his mission on Earth. He ends his instructions by saying that he will not leave us orphans and that the Holy Spirit will be with us always instructing us in all truth.

On this 7th Sunday of Easter, Jesus offers a great prayer of praise to God. In the Gospel of John, Jesus prays “Father, I pray not only for them (his disciples) but also for those who will believe in me through their word so that they may all be one and that the world may believe that you sent me.” The Spirit of Jesus calls us as it did the early Christian community to announce and proclaim God’s saving actions among us. Even as Jesus is lifted up from the sight of his apostles, we have the blessed assurance of knowing that the Holy Spirit is with us always.

Jesus proclaims to us all “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The Holy Spirit will help us to cross boundaries of race, language, and culture. The Holy Spirit will expand our understanding of who God is and what God is calling us to do. 

The Spirit of Jesus which was given to us at our Baptism challenged us to build bridges, not barriers. Christianity is not a private religion just between me and God. We are challenged to live our relationship with God among people who are different from us. Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians encourages us to “Live in a manner worthy of the call we have received with gentleness, humility, patience, preserving the Spirit’s bond of peace.”

We celebrate this exuberant feast and hear these readings in a world still reeling from the impact of the pandemic.  While our own country seems to be making headway in quelling the virus, other parts of the world such as India are still being devastated, and lack the resources to care for untold numbers of victims.  Coupled with the assault of the virus, we also seem to be infected with debilitating conflicts and polarities in our body politic and even in our church.

Recently I read Pope Francis’s remarkable reflections on the impact of the pandemic in his book, Let Us Dream.  The Path to a Better Future.  One of his observations came back to me in thinking about the disciples’ reaction to Jesus’ Ascension.  The Pope noted how many of us during the lockdown have stayed pretty much at home, venturing out only for a walk to stretch our legs or to go to the store.  But then we would return to our familiar “shelter in place.” We were “like a tourist who goes to the sea or the mountains for a week of relaxation but then returns to her suffocating routine.  She has moved, but sideways, only to come back to where she started.” Pope Francis contrasts this routine with another kind of experience, that of “pilgrimage.”  The authentic pilgrim “goes out from herself, opens herself to a new horizon, and when she comes home she is no longer the same, and so her home won’t be the same.”  The Pope concludes: “This is a time for pilgrimages.”

This feast reminds us that often the Spirit of Jesus given to us at baptism can run against the grain of the prevailing forces in our society.  Building bridges instead of barriers; seeking reconciliation more than confrontation; welcoming those on the periphery rather than ignoring them.  Living, as the Letter to the Ephesians reminds us, “in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.”