We celebrate the Ascension this Sunday, Jesus ascending into Heaven. We focus our lives on ascending. We are climbing the ladder of life one success after another. We look at our life and we think it should be a straight line to heaven. Do you know anyone who has done it this way? No, I don’t either. Jesus shows us how to ascend. You ascend by first descending. You first have to descend in order to ascend. I think that is the reason the two men dressed in white garments question the disciples. Stop looking up. You too must descend into your lives.
One spiritual writer put it this way, “we fall upwards.” As I mentioned in my homily last week, our spirituality isn’t something we do, it’s something God does to us. We learn much more from our failures (our falling) than our successes. Our successes send us into an ego trip and we proudly declare, “look what I’ve done.” God can’t do much work with that. We are already claiming we don’t need him. Our failures, on the other hand, teach us so much. That’s where we really learn. We learn how to rely on God and God’s people in a deeper way. We learn that we are forgiven, that all is grace, and we in turn learn how to forgive others. Our lives are never a straight line, are they? One person put it, it’s like a ball of spaghetti. Of course, who wants to fall? That is the last thing on my docket.
God bless,
Fr. Chris