Ascension: A Necessary Ending!
The ascension of our Lord marks the end of his earthly existence as the incarnate Son of God. He had earlier told his disciples that if he didn’t go, the Holy Spirit would not come (Jn. 16:7). In other words, it was necessary that he should go back to His Father so that he would not be limited by his physical condition to a particular place at a time. Ascension then was a NECESSARY ENDING so that a new phase in God’s plan of salvation for the world would begin. Think of it this way: if Jesus did not go back to the Father the era of the Holy Spirit and of the Church, would not have begun, and other parts of the world would not hear the Good News. It was the Spirit released only after Jesus had gone back that filled the apostles and us Christians today, so that we can testify to the wonders of God’s love.
Ascension as a necessary ending is a model of how life is lived. Henry Cloud wrote a book titled: Necessary Endings, and Chapter One is titled: “Endings: the good cannot begin until the bad ends”. The bad condition may not necessarily be morally reprehensible or evil, but it is bad simply because it no longer works; it is draining life rather than giving it. Everywhere there is a sign of death, shrinkage, waste of effort and energy. Children grow into young adults, and we stop feeding them with feeding bottles or giving them pacifiers. Spinsters and bachelors get married, and they put an end to certain ways of thinking and living that belonged to their previous state of life. If they marry and live like an independent bachelor or spinster, then they are creating friction and stress. The arrival of digital cameras brought an end to analogue cameras, so the businesses dealing in camera change with the new. They will be out of business if they insist on selling the old. You think of the various structures of institutions still run by persons whose ideas can no longer sustain growth and renewal. Yet, they sit and watch the steady decline of an institution placed in their hands.
When what should end in our lives, institutions, families, and relationships persist, new life and new beginnings will be stalled. Think of a man who works hard but lacks quality time with his family. Gradually, this condition alienates him from his family, and the family relationship becomes touchy. While hard work is necessary to make money and pay the bills, it is also necessary that the lack of quality time should end so that life flows among the family members. A negative but common example in our culture: family members may hide the dysfunction in their family behind self-righteousness and apparent religious perfection. The lie may have served them for a while. But there comes a time when it can no longer be sustained! Unless they confront their lie and face the truth, the family remains entrapped in a vicious cycle of problems and decay, and no amount of deliverance prayers can change the situation from the outside! The lie has to end so that the light of truth can come in and transform the family and its members.
When a necessary ending stares you in the face and you refuse it, you refuse a new life God is giving you. Henri Nouwen was a professor of spirituality at Harvard University. But it came to a point in his life when he knew that as a priest, he had lost his soul in the academic world. It was time to leave the exalted place of academia, which had become “bad” and killing for him. He found his soul in living with the handicapped people at L’Arche community in Toronto, founded by Jean Vanier. Those children who were “nobody” in the eyes of the world gave him back his soul. But he needed to end his stay at Harvard to find it! Mother Teresa had to leave the comfort of Loreto convent to the slums of Calcutta, and Richard Stearns had to end his position as the CEO of Lenox Inc. to become the president of World Vision, a foundation that dares to look poverty, sickness, and alienation in the face and touch it with a hand. Necessary endings mean death so that new life can begin.
It is the soul that invites us to end what should necessarily end in our lives. Often, we do not obey this call of the soul, and so we gradually die or atrophy; our life then is filled with lethargy, ennui and reckless dissipation of energy in all kinds of self-indulgence. These are all symptoms of a life that needs a new vision and energy, and this can happen only when what should end is ended. May the Lord assist you in taking a life-inventory of what should be ended in your life, so that you can experience a better and deeper life. Amen
Fr Cornelius Okeje