A wise friend of mine once said, “you are the version of God He wanted to share with the world.” And our readings today on this beautiful Ascension feast, echo that sentiment: But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked through them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs (Mark 16:20). We’re not all called to the same life, but we are all called to the same command— to be that version of God… and know that he’s always working through us.
This excerpt is taken from Santuncci’s Meeting Jesus, A New Way to Christ. And for “forever” it will resonate in my heart as a profound explanation of the Ascension of our Lord. He’s been everywhere we’ve been and will be… because He dwells not “in the clouds” but in the version of Him that is YOU. GO share Him. ~Sara
When the clouds have hidden me from your eyes, you’ll go on gazing at their restlessly shifting shapes against the silk of heaven. You’d like to stay there for thousands of years, because you were told he’ll come back exactly as you saw him rise. Then two men dressed in white will tell you to go home. Obey them, go down with the others. And when you’ve shut your door behind you, and stand among your poor possessions, and then lean out of your window, know that I have still another thing to tell you. Don’t look up at the sky. On this, the day of the Ascension I’m hiding behind a cloud, but I could equally hide myself behind a bush, in the hollow trunk of a tree, or in a pool in Galilee. The Father to whom I’m going doesn’t live beyond the flight of birds. He’s on the moors swept by the wind, in unknown haystacks where you may happen to sleep one night, on mountain ridges, under the bed, and on the roofs of cities.
After I’ve ascended, he and I will be wherever you are in the world. Then nothing will be strange to you. Whenever you set foot in a strange land you’ll recognize it behind some hidden memory because I shall have lived there for you. Whenever you leave a country you’ll know that you’re not altogether abandoning it, because you’ll leave me there. Everywhere will become your motherland and your home. Distances will be wiped out from the moment when I left the hilltop and set out on my travels through the world. Then you’ll understand that I only pretended to go away. You’ll understand it for this reason: that you’ll no longer feel afraid.
My life doesn’t end here; if it ended you too would die. It goes on even when you wish for dissolution, because it’s precisely in me that you long to be dissolved. Every despair, every travail of your day is a desire to reunite yourselves with me, to see me again on the clouds, to serve me at table (221-222).