After his Resurrection from the dead, Our Lord tarried on earth for 40 days, assembling a circle of witnesses: people who had real, personal encounters with the risen Lord: they walked with him, talked with him, broke bread with him: they could report from their own direct experience that this Jesus, who had died, was risen again from the dead.  He inspired many hundreds of disciples in this way: those many witnesses who could testify that Jesus had not remained in the grave.  That he lived on.  That he lived again.  And their testimony became the essential core of the Christian mission: their task was to proclaim to the world that Christ is alive.  The Risen Christ gave his disciples the mission to go forth into the world and share what they had experienced, both with their words and with their manner of life.  And they did so: no sooner had the Lord gone, than the disciples had already gone forth and, in the words of the St. Mark, “preached everywhere,” accompanying their preaching with signs and behaviors that confirmed the truth of their message.  And, after the coming of the Holy Spirit a few days later, this gospel spread like wildfire.  Because the apostles’ message was radical and new.  They weren’t just offering sound moral advice: that would be nothing new.  They weren’t just providing insights into human nature: that would be nothing new.  They were claiming, based on their own first-hand experience, that the Anointed One of God had destroyed the power of sin.  They were claiming that death no longer has to have the last word in our lives.  The apostles heard a man claim to have authority over life and death, and they saw him prove it.  They heard him offer them, offer us, the path to follow him to immortality and everlasting peace, and they saw him prove it.  And then he returned to his Father in heaven. 

We might have expected the disciples to be sad and disheartened when Our Lord left them: they might have felt a sense of deflation and loss at the final departure of their Lord.  But this is not what the Gospels record.  They record the opposite in fact.  The disciples were inspired by the Lord’s departure, not disheartened by it: they went forth and preached the Good News immediately and without any hesitation or confusion or regret.  St. Luke even reports that their first reaction was to “return with great joy…to Jerusalem”: to Jerusalem!  To the place of Christ’s suffering and death, and the place of their own failures: the place of these horrible memories had been transformed in their minds into a place of joy: because now, they understood.  They understood what all this was about.  “They were continually in the temple blessing God,” we’re told, because God had now brought their salvation to its completion.  They knew that Jesus had not simply drifted away, floating off into some unknown oblivion.  He had entered back into his full communion of power and life with God the Father.  And so, what that means is, he isn’t really gone.  By the Father’s own power, Christ remains present with us and for us.  And this is the mystery: by going away, he actually becomes closer to us.  Because he is with the Father.  Now he is no longer in one particular place in the world as he had been before the Ascension.  Now, through his vantage point on the Mountain of God, he is present and accessible to everyone: at every moment in history, and in every place.  He can be with us always, and we can call on him at any time, knowing that he is able to reach us.  And this is the essence of Christian hope, the reason for our peace and our joy.  His final promise is “to remain with us until the end of time.”  The Ascended Lord is with us.  Like the apostles, let us be inspired to preach this message everywhere, living always in the joy of those who have been called, redeemed, and saved.