‘You will be my witnesses’
What are we to make of the Ascension? In the creed every Sunday we say that Jesus ‘ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty’. In Luke’s account in Acts which we read today, it seems that the apostles still just did not get it. It seems they still wanted a secular king who would restore the kingdom to Israel – that is, throw the Romans out and perhaps be a King David the Second.
Jesus had often told the disciples that his kingdom wasn’t like that, and as so often, Jesus’ reply to their question – when was he going to restore the kingdom to Israel – is elliptical. Jesus just says, ‘it’s not for you to know the times that the Father has decided on his own authority. But you will be my witnesses, not only in in Jerusalem but across Judaea and Samaria, and to all the world’.
‘You will be my witnesses’. Writing on evangelisation in 1975, Pope Paul VI said that people ‘listen more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if they do listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses’. I think that what Pope Paul was getting at was, it’s what you do, as much as what you say, that matters.
A few weeks ago I borrowed a book from the Wellington City Library on St Oscar Romero and Catholic Social Teaching. Romero was the archbishop of San Salvador from 1977 until he was murdered in March 1980. Much influenced by Pope Paul, as he matured in discipleship, Romero learned to listen, especially to the most vulnerable and marginalised. This is always an exercise in humility if you are in a position of power and influence, whether an archbishop or a professor. And as he listened, Romero spoke, often, in defence of the poor, the exploited day labourers, the landless peasantry – all in a context of outrageous inequality and increasing government and quasi-government repression and violence. Pope Francis canonised him in 2018.
Pope Paul emphasised that it was impossible that ‘in evangelisation one could or should ignore the importance of the problems so much discussed today, concerning justice, liberation, development and peace in the world’. In his first blessing after being elected, Pope Leo said, ‘we must look for ways to be a missionary Church, a Church that builds bridges and encourages dialogue, a Church ever open to welcoming… all those who are in need of our charity, our presence, our readiness to dialogue and our love’.
Seen in that light, the Ascension is not so much an end as a beginning.
Jim McAloon
