Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year A - Sunday, May 21, 2023
By thine Ascension draw us withal unto Thee, O Lord, so as to set our affections on things above, and not on things on the earth. By the awful mystery of Thy Holy Body and Precious Blood in the evening of this day: Lord, have mercy. Amen.
This prayer of the Anglican Divine, Lancelot Andrewes, reminds us that those of us living on this side of the Ascension have a choice to make. Either we can set our affections on things above or on things on earth. St. Paul, who inspired this prayer, would go further: “Set your mind on things above where your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
Perhaps one of the most blinding errors of Christian spirituality is the neglect of this verse from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Here in the West, Roman Catholics have tended to neglect it because they have tended to neglect the writings of St. Paul in general. Protestants have neglected it because they have allowed other Pauline topics, like justification and salvation, to eclipse it and have been largely afraid of its mystical connotations and implications. This neglect, in my mind, has distorted the meaning of the Ascension and has left us spiritually in a state of heightened expectation of what is still to come rather than in a state of heightened realization of what has already come. How many Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians obsess about the timing of the Second Coming and the details of the Rapture—all the while Christian contemplatives scratch their heads wondering what all the fuss is about! When we take Paul seriously and our faith is awakened to the full extent of what Christ has accomplished for us we begin to see that the gospel is not simply that Christ is ascended into heaven but that we are too! And yes, even now!! The work of Christ and the Spirit, of Ascension and Pentecost, is to make the eternal reality a present reality in the realm of time—in our time—so that on this very day and at this very moment the triumph of Christ in his Ascension is our triumph too and the presence of God can now be experienced, known, and enjoyed in a new Pentecostal fullness. “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Yet, if this promise of eternal life is now available, and we are now ascended with Christ reigning in glory, the question becomes all too obvious—why do we so seldom feel like we are?!?! We say that we are currently living in the already but not yet—in the tension between the seed of this eternal life taking root in our lives and the full flourishing of that eternal life. What, I think, is so scandalous about the Church is that after 2000 years we have still realized this eternal life so little!
And that we still remain largely a product of our broken societies—anxious, fearful, self-absorbed, and tossed to and fro by the shifting winds of a culture lost at sea. What is equally scandalous is that the Church has offered so few convincing answers to this predicament. We have produced eloquently formed documents about God; we have built magnificent buildings which reveal the glory of God; but where are the actual Christians whose lives speak with this eloquence and whose lives manifest the glory of this magnificence? Why are we still more like the disciples before Pentecost full of anxiety and fear locked behind closed doors than we are like the disciples after Pentecost full of the Spirit radiating the glory of God?
Today’s first lesson from the Acts of the Apostles tells us quite explicitly what must take place for this transformation from fear to fullness to occur. If we want to move out of our prison of anxiety and fear and into a life full of God, two things must happen: we must first “come together” and then we must “pray.”
In a recent article in the Associated Press entitled, “How the American Dream Convinces People Loneliness is Normal,” Ted Anthony mentions that just this month the U. S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an American epidemic, saying that it takes as deadly a toll as smoking upon the population of the United States. “Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows,” he said, “and that’s not right.” He cited some potential contributing forces: the gradual withering of longstanding institutions, decreased engagement with churches, the fraying bonds of extended families. When you add recent stressors — the rise of social media and virtual life, post-9/11 polarization and the way COVID-19 interrupted existence — the challenge, he notes, becomes even more stark.
Could it be that this mounting sense of isolation so many in our society are experiencing is contributing to the equally mounting anxiety and other mental health issues that so many face today? We Christians have a very powerful anecdote to this isolation epidemic—it is creating community—communities where all feel welcome and are valued as integral parts of the whole. But, even more importantly, communities whose focus is not primarily the issues we face in our broken societies—not just fighting for social justice, as important as this is— but whose primary focus is God.
And that brings us to the second point: we “come together” not just to build social bonds but to “pray.” It was while the disciples were praying that they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and it was while Jesus was praying that he was transfigured. Praying, especially praying together, is the way to move out of fear and into fullness—out of anxiety and self-absorption and into freedom and self- transcendence—and to ultimately realize the fullness of life that is the gift of Ascension and Pentecost.
To be a little more specific, since there are many ways that Christian communities can pray together—and whenever this prayer is sincere it is certainly a good thing—there is a particular form of prayer that I believe is most appropriate and effective in helping us realize our fullness of life in God.
Rather than positioning ourselves like the “men of Galilee” who stand looking up toward heaven as if the Lord is out there caught up in the clouds— relating to God solely as some objective reality far removed from us—we should position ourselves more like we often do here—coming together in quiet attention with the ears of our hearts open listening and absorbing the presence of God mediated to us in word, Spirit, and sacrament. We meditate and contemplate together not what we hope to receive but what has already been poured out upon us. We marinate in the atmosphere of God’s presence in which we have been immersed in our baptism and awaken to the reality of the new creation of God’s justice and peace. We feed on the life of our Lord and become what we eat. We are disarmed by the love which consumes us and are liberated from grasping after something we think that is missing because we now realize that all is already given. In this pregnant silence, all striving ceases, all restlessness is stilled, all disappointment forgotten, and all anxiety and fear is cast out. There is no longer any room for anything but love and light in the still place where God is all in all and where we are all one—together in God. This humble place of emptiness paradoxically becomes the place of fullness. This place of nothingness becomes the place where everything becomes possible.
In one of the most profound sections of Scripture, Chapter 17 of the Gospel of John, as we just heard, Jesus prays to the Father saying that he will soon no longer be in the world, but that we, his disciples, will remain, even as he goes to the Father. He then prays that we, his disciples, would be protected in the name that the Father has given to him, so that we may be one just as the Father and the Son are one. For John, oneness is always and only through love. It is the very reality of God which casts out fear. It is the light which drives out darkness. It is a way of being which knows no division. Jesus’ prayer is that even in this world we would know such a glorious way of being. To be protected in the name the Father gave to the Son—the name Jesus—which literally means “God’s salvation”—is to be overshadowed by the love of the Father for the Son and to exist in a bond so strong that nothing can exist but the very glory of God. The Christian community is baptized into that name and that name is now our own. We are daughters and sons in the Son—and this is most true when we come together and pray. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”
As we find ourselves approaching the final feast of Christ’s saving events, we might ask ourselves what difference has Christ’s paschal journey made for us? Are we still looking up toward heaven as if God is still far away? Or are we awakening day by day to the reality that we are, even now, in God and God is in us? This in no way should suggest that this absorption into things divine should cause us to be unconcerned about the things of this world. Rather, a true uniting of ourselves to God is the most important and most powerful source to nurture our compassion for the world. To be full of God is to be full of God’s love. And this is the surest sign that we are a Pentecostal people reigning in the Ascended Christ— that we have love for one another. Perhaps Merton said it best, “To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.” The realization of this is the great gift of contemplative prayer, and the embodiment of it is the fulfillment of our Christian call.
So, with St. Paul, “ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
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