Ascending + Descending

Last week we experienced the feast of the Ascension, the completion of the circle of descent and ascent that marks the great cycle of the incarnation of Christ our Lord and Brother. In God’s merciful love for us misguided and wandering children, God’s Triune Mystery sent the Son among us, to be one of us to teach us what the words of Scripture alone could not accomplish. 

The Son of God entered fully into the mess and muck of our humanity as son of Mary, embracing entirely our human fragility and uncertainty. He made gracious allowance for our frailty and and weakness, climbing down into our human flesh and truly becoming one with us in it. He taught with words and deeds, signs and wonders, and on an awful Friday afternoon, he made the final descent, and was laid to rest in the cold stony world he had created and came to save. 

He descended into death itself, he descended into hell our Creed tells us, and broke its bonds, set free those who had gone before him into the dark. In the light of his rising up he showed us all the way home. He lit the way of hope that belongs to us because he has called us to follow him, out of death and into life. 

We believe that in the beginning, before the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the primordial chaos, over the waters. God spoke a word of creation, and there was light. We chose the ways of darkness, the realm of selfishness. God saw our frailty and descended from on high as Mary’s son, to show us the way up out of darkness. God’s spirit descends as Jesus ascends to the father, and makes something new, makes all things new.

The feast of the Ascension of Jesus we celebrated last week was a preface, a preparation for this week’s celebration of Pentecost. The Creator’s and the Redeemer’s own Spirit descended upon his disciples, into the disciples. Today is a feast of incarnation no less than Christmas: when the God in the Spirit becomes flesh anew, now in us, in all of us, not only in Christ. 

Something new is created: a community of belief and hope, a community bound together in the fire of love that unites us despite our differences.

The descending Spirit calls from us deeds of generosity and power that mirror Jesus’ own deeds, and as he himself said, deeds of love that are greater than his own deeds.  

The disciples breathed in that Spirit, that in-spiration, that breathing in. But the Spirit is not to be held fast; for we know that if we hold our breath we die. Rather the Spirit is breathed in to give us life and hope, but not held onto. Rather, the breath of the Spirit is given to be shared, breathed out again, now by us, extended, passed on.

In our baptism Jesus bids his disciples to share the Spirit’s power with the world, in our confirmation we receive that power—as our young people received it sacramentally two weeks ago in our sharing at this table where we receive these gifts quickened by the Spirit’s action into the Body and Blood of the Lord, continue to be nourished and strengthened, becoming what we receive.

Now, truly, wonderfully, the Spirit is given to anew to us and through us in the daily acts of charity and love we share, even as Jesus shared his love in his loving descent among us. Jesus descended and ascended; the Spirit was poured out and yet remains, ever to be shared. 

Great and wonderful is the mystery of our faith.

Blessings,