The Ascension of Our Lord
May 31, 2025 Column Father De Celles
The Ascension of the Lord. Although the feast of the Ascension is traditional celebrated as a Holy Day of Obligation on Thursday, i.e., 40 days after Easter Sunday as the Gospels record, many Dioceses, including ours own, move it to Sunday so that all Catholics are better able easily to celebrate this very important feast.
And this is a very important feast, in as much as it celebrates the fact that Jesus ascended, body and soul, into heaven, and now dwells in heaven as a bodily person. This reminds us that God the Son came into the world “like us in all things but sin” –of the reality of His bodily incarnation, birth, death and resurrection–and redeemed us entirely, body and soul. Moreover, it is a pledge to us of the resurrection of our bodies on the last day, and the transformation of the physical world into a glorious, “new heavens and a new earth.”
This in turn leads us to remember the dignity of the human body: your body is part of who you are, it is “you” as much as your soul is “you.” Your body is you speaking and communicating yourself to other bodily persons. As such, the body itself has meaning and speaks to others of this meaning. This is an important truth to keep in mind these days, as many try to degrade the body and treat it as an accidental part of who we are. They say the body and bodily acts mean nothing but what you want them to mean, and so you can ignore the basic truths that a person’s body tells us about them. This has become a key argument for those who advocate and promote all sorts of mental/emotional/behavioral problems, including pornography, homosexuality, “transgenderism” and “transsexualism.”
But that is contrary to common sense, the natural law (the way things clearly are designed to be) and divine revelation. And it is totally opposed to the dignity of the human body, which is so beautifully revealed to us in the mystery of the Ascension of the Lord: that the body communicates who we are and is so wonderful—so meaningful—that it is created to live in glory forever in heaven.
Novena to the Holy Spirit. 2000 years ago the Lord ascended into heaven on a Thursday, so that immediately after that first Ascension Thursday the apostles and the other disciples, with the Blessed Mother, began to pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised. For nine days they prayed, and on the tenth day, Pentecost Sunday, the Holy Spirit descend on them in a dramatic display of divine power. Those nine days of prayer are the origin of the pious Catholic custom praying of novenas (from “novem,” Latin for “nine”) for particular intentions.
The celebration of Ascension on Sunday complicates the idea of a “Pentecost Novena.” Even so, I invite you to join me in praying (privately, or with your families) a slightly shortened novena to the Holy Spirit. There are many different forms of praying Pentecost novenas, but a very simple one is to simply pray the Prayer to the Holy Spirit every day:
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and kindle in them the fire of Thy love. Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created. And Thou shall renew the face of the earth.
(Let us pray) Oh God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of Thy faithful. Grant us in the same Spirit to be truly wise, and ever rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen
CCD Summer Break. Religious Education (CCD) for our kids in grade school and high school is over for this year. Thanks be to God for another successful year!
And thanks to all the kids for coming and studying. I hope you learned more about your faith, and grew in your understanding of and love for Jesus and His Church. Thanks also to the parents for your cooperation with us, and allowing us to help you as primary educators of your children.
And thanks to the teachers and their assistants in CCD. What would we—the whole parish—do without you.
And finally, thanks to Virginia Osella, who concludes her first year as our Director of Religious Education. She has done a wonderful job, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. And to Mary Hansen, her Assistant, who helped her learn the ropes and made sure the trains ran on time. They both work extremely hard to make our program the best in the Diocese.
Graduating High School Seniors. Over the next few weeks many of our young men and women will be graduating from high school–congradulations. But this is not merely an ending, but a “commencement,” a new beginning of a new stage of life. So, as your spiritual father, may I pass on some words of wisdom?
“What will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?” (Matthew 16:26).
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1 Cor. 13:11).
“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (John 6: 53-55).
“And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22: 37-40)
“Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Matthew 19: 4-6).
“Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life” (Luke 18: 29-30).
“One came up to him, saying, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘If you would enter life, keep the commandments.’…” (Matthew 19: 16-19).
“With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27)
And finally: “…He said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’” (John 19: 26-27).
FORMED.ORG Coordinator. Many thanks to Vanessa Oswald for promoting and coordinating the parish FORMED.ORG account and activities for the last few years. Unfortunately, she needs to step down now and I need a volunteer to take her place. If you are interested please contact me.
Oremus pro invicem. Fr. De Celles