Shouts of joy! Trumpet blasts! Triumphant notes! These are the sounds of Easter, bursting forth with the great “Alleluia” of resurrection faith. In the church’s liturgical calendar, the Solemnity of the Ascension serves as an exclamation point to the season of Easter. Victory over death; now, exaltation in glory, “Christ in heaven at God’s right hand.” How else to respond but with songs of praise?

Well, maybe with a few lingering questions. The first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles offers a glimpse of confusion among the first followers of Jesus on the precipice of this momentous transition. “Has the time come, Rabbi? Are you going to restore sovereignty to Israel?” Should we imagine that they could simply rest content with Jesus’s reply? “It is not for you to know times or dates that Abba God has decided.” As we picture them “still gazing up into the heavens” after “Jesus was lifted up in a cloud before their eyes and taken from their sight,” one might hear, beyond the text, a continuation: “How about a clue?” Perhaps a muffled “Wait. We’re not ready.” A protest, even: “No! Don’t go.” I have to wonder whether there were tears shed for “Jesus, who has been taken from you.”  

Today’s readings gesture to an Easter experience that is more multihued than technicolor elation and joy. The story is typically rendered in three parts: Life-Death-Resurrection. Presence-Absence-Presence. But whether played out over 40 days as the Acts of the Apostles and subsequent church tradition would have it, or in the more compressed version conveyed by today’s Gospel, the longer ending of Mark, the narrative sequence here is more textured and more jarring. Consider these first followers trying to track their experience: This is the one whom we loved; who ate with us and taught us, struggled alongside us; the one in whom we came to place your deepest hopes for God’s saving work in the world. He was brutally taken away, crucified, and buried; truly, he was dead and gone. But behold: He still lives! For a while he was once again miraculously and mercifully in our midst. Now, he is gone again… yet this time not buried but ascended, taken up. This is good…? And these messengers in white tell us he will return! And, meanwhile, we have a job to do, and Jesus will still be with us, sort of, as we do it. What to make of this ricochet of presence and absence?       

I often remind my students to imagine the disciples not as self-conscious actors in a scripted movement from one doctrinal proclamation to the next, but reeling from the loss of their friend and trying to make sense of it all. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, whose exposition of the Ascension tends toward a confident and overly tidy rendering in several respects, nevertheless contains this interesting gesture to a layered truth: “Christ’s Ascension marks the definitive entrance of Jesus’s humanity into God’s heavenly domain, whence he will come again (cf Acts 1:11); this humanity in the meantime hides him from the eyes of men [sic] (cf Col 3:3)” (CCC 665). That which connects Jesus to us and to our world is now, by virtue of its glorious embrace in the everlasting life of the Creator, the cause of his hiddenness to us. 

Acknowledging ambiguity is important because it is honest. This perspective typifies Christian discipleship lived in between the presence and absence of Jesus the risen savior – lived, that is, in the accompaniment of the Holy Spirit. The connective thread across this New Testament narrative, and from that story to ours, emerges in an understated but unmistakable way in Acts’ account of the interim period within the single reality of resurrection/ascension: over these 40 days, Jesus “spoke to them about the reign of God.” Just as he always had.  

The Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009), like other liberation theologians, understands God’s raising of Jesus from the dead as “the divine confirmation of the validity and the rightness of Jesus’s life and message” (God Among Us, 134). The solidarity Christ shows with us – especially in his ministry to the poor and oppressed – is thus given permanent meaning in his ascension to God. Per Schillebeeckx, “Risen, glorified corporeality, eternal life, is the fulfilled and successful form of our being there for the other, as a form of letting ourselves be loved by God” (141). So, paradoxically, Jesus’ steadfast commitment to justice, peace, and flourishing for God’s creation – which flows from his unbroken bond of trust with God – becomes the basis of his being taken up and taken away. Yet, this exaltation is also the condition of possibility for the sending of the Spirit, whose accompaniment is tied, in Jesus’s last instructions, to the disciples’ continuing participation in the mission of the reign of God. Songs of praise are thus a fitting celebration of this Feast; so, too, a renewed commitment to breaking bread and breaking chains.

Recently, Bishop Evelio Menjivar, an auxiliary bishop of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington and a native of El Salvador, penned a timely reflection. I quote a portion of it here.  

When I was growing up in El Salvador, there was a man who was not afraid to speak out. His name was Óscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador. It seems to me that we need more Óscar Romeros today. We need everyone of good will to follow his lead and demand that the government respect human dignity. 

In his last Sunday homily on the day before he was killed, Saint Óscar Romero made a special appeal to government agents: “It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience and to obey your conscience rather than the command to sin,” he said. “We want the government to understand well that the reforms are worth nothing if they are stained with so much blood. In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments rise up each day more tumultuously toward heaven, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression!”

I urge government officers and support staff in the present situation to heed these words which echo through history. It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience. What you are doing is worth nothing if it is stained with unjust cruelty. That is not what America stands for. You too can and should speak out against this terror and infliction of suffering on people. You can refuse to be involved in oppression and these grievous assaults on human rights and dignity.

Inspired by the words of Saint Oscar Romero and Bishop Menjivar, let us insist:

Avelo Airlines, ground your flights. ICE agents, burn your badges. Neighbors, speak up. Presidents, repent and reverse course.

Bishop Menjivar includes these questions to “those of you who are silent or think this does not involve you, to those of you who are not troubled by this – or worse, who applaud it – particularly those who are Catholic”:

• Do you not see the suffering of your neighbors? Do you not realize the pain and misery and very real fear and anxiety these unjust government operations and policies are causing? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?

To those who are appalled but as yet gripped by inertia, I would add the following first-person questions: 

• What will I do to ensure that Kilmar Abrego Garcia can return to his family and that Mahmoud Khalil can hold his newborn infant for the first time?
• How will I advocate for students and teachers like Rümeysa Öztürk, so that they are secure in their communities and able to speak freely?
• How will I ensure that students like  Rümeysa Öztürk never get captured in the first place and communities like hers are kept intact? 
• What risks am I willing to take for the restoration of rights and safety to asylum-seeker Andry Hernandez Romero and to all those unjustly imprisoned?

Over the past several years I have had the privilege of becoming familiar with the Sisters of Mercy and their rich tradition of service and justice. In so many ways, they exemplify how the measure of our faith is, as Schillebeeckx writes, “our being there for the other, as a form of letting ourselves be loved by God.” One of the Sisters’ five critical concerns is immigration. Many sisters and lay associates are active in direct ministry with migrants and refugees as well as advocacy efforts on their behalf, such as the recent action alert to “humanize victims of immigration cruelty; oppose outrageous budget bill.” For those of us trying to prayerfully answer the questions above, their communal witness and practical resources are a helpful point of reference.