With the Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension, we arrive at the end of Paschaltide, this season of celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection. During these 40 days, we have seen how the mystery of His living, resurrected body informs our understanding and appreciation of our own bodies, and how they serve as places of encounters with the Risen Lord. “Touch the place of the nails,” He told Thomas, inviting us to experience His mercy mediated by His own body given for us. On Good Shepherd Sunday, we saw the goodness of the human body, of the human person, and the great gift of bringing new life into the world. Christian marriage is a radical affirmation of the goodness of the human body, as the source of the new life that renews the Body of Christ, the Church, as the fruit of marriage is brought to the baptismal font in the children who receive their definitive birth in Christ in the waters of baptism. Finally, reflecting on the gift of Christ’s risen body in Holy Communion, we saw that His Body is the gateway to eternity, a pledge of future glory to come, as He prepares a home for us in His Father’s house by preparing a home for Himself in our hearts.

          We will hear in the Canon, or Eucharistic Prayer today, that at His Ascension, Christ “placed at the right hand of your glory our weak human nature, which he had united to himself.” With the Ascension, a human body, the Lord’s human body, is not just in Heaven, but is united to God Himself, at the right hand of the Father’s glory. To what end, we will hear in the Preface of today’s Mass: “[He] was taken up to heaven in their sight, that he might make us sharers in his divinity.”

          “God mounts his throne amid shouts of joy; the LORD, amid trumpet blasts. Sing praise to God, sing praise; sing praise to our king, sing praise.” In addition to this celebration of the goodness of the human body in Christ’s incarnation and redemption of our humanity in His own humanity, the Ascension is the original feast of Christ’s Kingship. Long before Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King in 1925, Christians have been celebrating this day (or, well, really last Thursday) as when He took up His kingship.

          A king must have a kingdom, so what is the kingdom over which Christ is king? St. Paul tells us today that the Father, “put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.” Christ’s Kingdom is present in His own body, which is the Church.

          Now this is strange: Christ takes up His kingship of a kingdom that is here on earth precisely as He ascends to Heaven? How can the Church be the living body of the Lord, when His living, resurrected, glorious body has departed into Heaven? Another of the prayers of the Mass responds: “Mediator between God and man, judge of the world and Lord of hosts, he ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.” If the Ascension seems like Christ departing, if we, like the Apostles, are standing and wondering, then it could be because we do not understand the Church, and we do not understand fully what it is to be a Christian.

          The Wikipedia article on Pope Leo begins, “Pope Leo is the Pope and head of the Catholic Church.” This is Wikipedia ecclesiology, and it is wrong. I am one hundred percent confident that Pope Leo himself would share my horror at the sweeping misunderstanding of the Church that this statement implies. The head of the Church is not Pope Leo. “He ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.” The head of the Church is Jesus Christ.

          Instead of Wikipedia ecclesiology (or, theology of the Church), Catholic ecclesiology sees the Church not as a non-governmental charitable organization, but as the Communion of the Saints, present in the Church militant on earth, the Church suffering in purgatory, and the Church triumphant in Heaven – the very same Church. Christ has chosen St. Peter and his successors not as mere replacements until He gets back – “You call the shots while I’m on vacation,” or something like that. Rather, they are the instruments through which Christ governs the Church, which is why we call the Holy Father the Vicar of Christ. Even each diocesan bishop is a vicar of Christ for his diocese, an instrument through whom, thanks to the extraordinary grace received through the fullness of the Sacrament of Orders in the episcopal rank, Christ governs this particular Church.

          This does not at all diminish, though, the importance of the Pope and the Bishops of the Church. “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” He tells them at His parting. The One possessed of all power in heaven and on earth leads His Body, the Church, through them. Do these men, due to their own human frailties, sometimes get in the way of what Christ actually wants to do in His Church? Yes, undoubtedly. But this is the way, in His provident wisdom, God has chosen for His Son to continue exercising His headship over His body.

          To be a Christian, then, is to be a member of this Body. It is not to have a membership in an organization that you can enter or leave at will. I once had a tense meeting with a non-Catholic woman who was upset that her children’s father had baptized them, and wanted their baptism taken off the parish records, since she does not believe in infant baptism. Aside from the fact that a baptismal register records an historical fact – the children were in fact baptized – no amount of white out can erase an indelible mark on one’s soul.

          But is being a Christian just a permanent membership, a club that you cannot get out of even if you try? While it is true that, “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” not just in a sociological sense (“You’ll always have that Catholic guilt!”), but in a true theological sense, this still misses the point and makes the Church more like a gang that it is impossible to leave.

          One more time back to that prayer from Mass today (Preface I of the Ascension): “He ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.” To be a Christian (and notice that I’m using “Christian” and “Catholic” interchangeably here, and that is not an accident) is to be a member of Christ. Not to be a member of an organization, but to be a part of a body – an arm, a leg, an eye, an ear, like that other famous passage from First Corinthians. Or to use another of our Lord’s words from a couple weeks ago, He is the vine, and we are the branches. We have been grafted onto the vine, and apart from Him, we wither and die. What we learn about Christ’s Body, the Church, from His Ascension today will be essential for understanding what He does to the Church next Sunday at Pentecost.

          To be a Christian, then, is to live with an upward tension and pull, because we are limbs on the Body of Christ, whose head is in Heaven. So it would be tempting for us to live constantly gazing in that direction. As we heard in the gorgeous entrance antiphon, one of the best chants of the entire year, Viri Galilei, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”

          To be Christian is not only to live with the upward tension of a body whose head is already in Heaven, but to live with an outward tension of a body that is called to grow. What is the point of the power that has been given to the Son who continues to be the head of the body and is exercised through His Apostles? “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” As we celebrate the Lord’s Ascension today, we desire not only that we would follow where the Head of the Body has gone, but that many more would do so as well. This is His greatest desire for His Church, and the one we also should be most striving to fulfill.

          As we said on Good Shepherd Sunday, Christian faith shows us the essential goodness of humanity rooted in God’s love for us and the hope we have for eternal life. In the Lord’s Ascension into Heaven, we see the eternal destiny God desires for our humanity, and this fills us with the joy of belief in Him, the joy that leads us to want more people to encounter the love of our Savior, to bring new life into this world, and to grow His Body, the Church, by making disciples and teaching them to observe His commands.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, A.D. MMXXVI