Traveling to the heart of the Father with Jesus

Homily
Ascension Sunday
16 May 2010
Graduation at the University of Kansas
Year for Priests

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It is fortuitious this year that Graduation Sunday at KU falls on the Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord. Graduation is a leaving to go somewhere new. So is the Ascension. Although Jesus' Ascension is not so much his going to a new place where He has never been, it is His going home. But what is new is the humanity, received sinless from the Virgin Mary, united to our sinful nature by his suffering on the cross, and completely redeemed and made new by His Resurrection, that He brings as a gift to His Father. Jesus is going home, but He is bringing something new with Him - that gift is us, His beloved bride the Church.

So too today, graduation Sunday at KU is, despite the inclement weather, a day of rejoicing. The graduates of the University are leaving here with something new. They are leaving with new knowledge that has broadened what they know to be good and true and beautiful. They are leaving with skills that will be valuable to the common good of all people. They are leaving with the virtues it took for them to achieve their respective degree. Most of all, they are leaving with new friendships. It is the encounter with new and different people that almost always leads to the greatest learning of all, and the University is a privileged place for this. All of these new things with which the graduates leave KU, have been learned over time and with great effort, sometimes the hard way. Few graduates can say that they have done everything right. But they are graduates nonetheless, and today is a day of rejoicing, both for what they have contributed to the university, a true place of discernment and learning, and for what they will take away.

But where will these graduates go? Will they go to where Jesus has led? That is the question that the mystery of the Ascension poses to us today. Jesus is leaving, but where is He going? Is he going for a ride on the clouds? Has he taken off for distant universes light years away from here? Surely the angel tells the disciples to stop looking at the sky, for He is ascending to a place where not even the Hubble telescope will be able to find Him. Where is Jesus going? And do this year's graduates have any chance of following where He has gone? What discipline will discover where Jesus has gone? Art? Philosophy? Engineering? Physics? Law? Religion? Where has Jesus gone, and will today's graduates of KU, in the exciting lifetime that lies in front of them, have the knowledge to follow Him and to find Him?

Today's graduates will almost certainly, unless our world self-destructs, live longer and go farther in time and space, and into the mysteries of the universe, than any generation has gone before. That is the hope and promise that the University will celebrate today - the progress of humanity toward that most elusive understanding and happiness that human persons most desperately seek. Yet we learn from our prayer and liturgy today, that this understanding and happiness that every graduate yearns for is more of a gift than an achievement. It is a gift won for us, and freely given to us, through our friendship and communion with Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ came among us in the Incarnation to show us that God is willing to make His home with us. He will remain with us until the end of time, perfectly through the Eucharist and through the interior gift of His Holy Spirit. Yet today, He ascends in glory to show us that it is our great opportunity to make our home with God as well. God has made His home with us, yet we must accept this by agreeing to make our home with God. That is what the mystery of the Ascension teaches us. Jesus is going home, and taking our humanity with him, to show us that wherever we may go, we can always be going home. Every experience in this world, everything we learn, has the ability to reveal our final destiny to live in the very heart of God. Jesus' travel in today's Ascension is not so much into outer space, but to the inner space of his relationship with His Father. For Jesus, heaven is not a place, it is a relationship with His Father. Heaven must be the same for us his disciples. Through the Ascension, He takes our humanity and places it where He is, in the heart of His Father.

Today's graduates will be spreading out to all corners of the world. Some of them, given the job market, will literally be going home, to the bedroom that they left 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 years ago, to wait out the recession and to look for an opportunity. Many will be headed back to school. Others will go all over the world to take advantage of relationships gained, or to learn more, or to pursue a great opportunity. Wherever these graduates go, our prayer for them today, is that all of them will continue heading home to the heart of the Father. Wherever life takes us, it is our vocation to love, and our identity as children who are loved by God, and our fidelity to Jesus' great commandment to love one another as He has loved us, that best define who we are, and will determine the fruit our lives will bear. Jesus is going home today, and is taking us with him, to the heart of the Father, where we belong, and where we can live and move in peace and freedom and security, without fear because the love of God is stronger than death. A blessed journey to all of our graduates, as you journey deeper with Jesus to the heart of the Father. May you always know yourselves to be loved deeply by God. May you have confidence that no evil can take you out of the Father's hand. May your relationship with Jesus Christ help you to be in deeper and more meaningful relationships with all those whom He loves. May you know of our Church's prayers for you, and may today's mystery of the Ascension help you to see the world, and all its opportunities, and every person in it, as being at the very heart of God! Congratulations, and God bless all of today's graduates!