Reflection on the Feast of the Ascension

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.”

When I said I would write this homily for the Feast of the Ascension, I began to think of the body, our bodies, our bodies to be resurrected. First off, it is hard to imagine where God would put all the bodies. I’m guessing all of life would be resurrected: people, beloved dogs and cats, cattle and all sorts of bugs. And then there are the trees and grasses and flowers. All the life force of creation. Why not? If God’s going to find room for all the people, then why not all of life? Death is vanquished. The logistics are a stumbling block.

Then I began to think of my body. The first years we opened the St. Louis Catholic Worker my journal has an entry that one day we had mothers and 39 children. What I remember is that the children carried germs. We were sick a lot those years. I remember saying that to get on with my work, I was turning my back on my body, washing my hands of it.

We are body and soul. It sounds clever, but we can’t turn our backs on our bodies. We are our bodies as much as we are our souls. I hope my resurrected body is lean and strong.

Then I read the Scriptures. All the glorious promise of Acts and Ephesians. And the Gospel says that the Apostles went to the mountain to meet Jesus and when they saw him they worshiped and they doubted. 

Perhaps some of you don’t doubt. Me, I doubt. And I take comfort that the Apostles who were right there doubted. For me it is very hard to believe my body will rise. So I go back to what  I do know, that God is love and God is life. 

Mary Kay Brannan and Mary Kay Widger and I made our first vows on Ascension Thursday. Sharon Kassing, Donna Day and Helen Santamaria were received that day and then by a calendar anomaly two years later they also made their first vows on Ascension Thursday, May 31. I said then and I still say “may this offering of my heart be acceptable in thine eyes. Receive me into the arms of thine infinite goodness so that one day I may see thee, praise thee and love thee for ever and ever.” 

I try to modernize the “thees” and “thines” when I say it out loud, but the old words stick in my mind  – and embedded within them is the faith that is a cornerstone of my life. I started to say it’s the faith I’ve built my life on, but that is not accurate. I’ve built my life not on the Apostles’ Creed but on love, on meeting the other person and loving them – along with disliking and being angry and wanting to reject them — and in the course of meeting them and loving them and not loving them, meeting God. 

 When all is said and done, I do not understand the Resurrection. And that’s the point. We don’t have to understand. Probably we’re not supposed to understand. We just need to try to love one another. God will come.