Brothers and sisters

May the Lord give you Peace!

          ​In Italy a famous painter made a beautiful picture, a painting of Jesus. A pilgrim Jesus knocking on a door. And he received this criticism: the painting is beautiful, but the door has no handle. And he defended himself by saying: that’s how the painting is. This door is the door to our hearts, and the door to our hearts does not open from the outside, but from within. Yes, brothers and sisters, Jesus can knock on the doors of our hearts, but he cannot open the door of our hearts. We have to be the ones to open.

          Jesus knocks on the door of our hearts in different ways: with his divine word, with the homily, through events, history, even through challenges. Saint Paul said: “May the Spirit enlighten the eyes of your heart to make you understand to what hope you have been called”. And today he knocks on the door of our hearts, he enlightens us with the celebration of the Solemnity of the Ascension.

          Jesus invites us to return to Galilee, to the mountain, and in him to change our gaze, the perspective of his presence. St. Matthew narrates the Ascension in Galilee and St. Luke, in Jerusalem. We welcome this invitation to return to Galilee, to go back to the beginning. Reading the gospel is different from reading any other book. You finish reading a book when you finish the last chapter. Reading the Gospel is to begin. In fact, the Ascension is the beginning of the Church’s mission.

          But beware brothers and sisters, in recent times we have been living in temptation and concern and with so many invitations to look to the right or to the left; to look at problems and difficulties. Politics, selfishness. And there is the great risk of stopping our gaze at the limit of the reality of the problems, at the arguments.

          The Ascension – which invites us to look only above, towards the goal of the Announcing of his name, of his Gospel – that eternal reality and the Eternal who is within us through his Spirit. He, the Lord Jesus, with his resurrection opens us to hope. When we feel exiled, lost, sad and anxious, we look beyond the clouds, like the Apostles: we will no longer see the Master, but we know that he is alive and present in us and among us at all times, forever.

          And we have the question: And after this? Are we still looking at the sky? No, he delivers his Church, his kingdom to us…. We are called to bring about the Kingdom, to make hope present. Yes, in this fragile Church, in a fragile world. Which God loves. And in this love, the time of the Church began with the ascension.  However, the ascension is not the departure of Jesus… it is not the end, but it is the beginning of the new form of his presence. Jesus told us: I will be with you until the end of the world. He is with us through the sacraments, through his word, through the Eucharist. And he sends us to be: Christians, and to be witnesses of his life. The Lord trusts the apostles and he also trusts us, he sends us despite our defects, but with faith, with trust, with the strength of the Holy Spirit that we received on the day of our Baptism.

          Brothers and sisters, let us open ourselves to the grace of being able to celebrate this solemnity of the ascension, to the gift of this hope. Let us ask the Lord, with the intercession of the Most Holy Virgin, of Saint Barnabas and Saint Paul, for the grace to enlighten the eyes of our hearts.

O high and glorious God, enlighten the darkness

of my heart. Give me true faith, sure hope,

perfect charity

and profound humility.

Give me, Lord, sense and discernment to fulfill your truth

and holy will. Amen.