The coming of God to earth in Jesus Christ is a response to faith of one kind. His departure from here to the Kingdom of Heaven calls for faith of another kind. It is one thing to believe in Christ, to follow His life, His teachings, His works, His establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, His Passion, Death and Rising. They are all, shall we say, manageable with God's grace. But His leaving us is something else again.

He "ascended" is the term. Yet it is that only in a manner of speaking. He did not go up, for there is no up. The bright, young child will explain to his mother, "But there is no up. The earth is a spinning globe hurtling through space around a sun which is itself in motion. And even for space itself —what is beyond where it ends?"

Alas. We do not know. We talk glibly of things we know little of. In fact, we are surrounded by marvels we are used to, but can scarcely understand. What is air? It is invisible, yet is something, is made of something. When it moves, the leaves tremble, I feel it on my cheek. We say it is molecules or some such components, invisible entities, yet powerful enough to lay a town low when moving hundreds of miles an hour. Molecules, you say? How interesting.

Where did Christ go, then? He went to Heaven.

"Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness." [Catechism of the Catholic Church #1024.]
"To live in Heaven is to be with Christ. The elect live in Christ but they retain, or rather, find their true identity, their own name." [ibid., #1025]
"By His Death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has opened Heaven for us. The life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partakers in His heavenly glorification those who have believed in Him and have remained faithful to His Will. Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ." [ibid., #1026]
"The mystery of blessed communion with God of all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture speaks of it in images: light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the Kingdom, the Father's House, the Heavenly Jerusalem, Paradise, ‘no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.'" [ibid., #1027]
"The Church calls this contemplation of God in His heavenly glory the Beatific Vision." [ibid., #1028]
"In the glory of Heaven the blessed continue joyfully to fulfill God's Will in relation to others and all creation." [ibid., #1029]

Yet we must live with an eye on Heaven because we are destined to live there forever with God. We were created for God. We should not shy away from such beautiful truths. To ponder on them is nurturing, nourishing, sustaining. We are all immortal and to consider that as something irrelevant is indeed disastrous. Nothing about us is more significant. To stand in silent awe before such truths expands the heart and deepens existence.

Nor can one say, as is said, that to dwell in Heaven by hope and desire is to take our mind off the human business of living. That is absurd, for the business of living is to prepare for eternal life. Because that is so, we take life extremely seriously. Human life has dimensions we can scarcely imagine. And to live with that in mind means that life here is something we enter into whole-heartedly, with great love.

A mother cannot be indifferent to the life in her womb, least of all because the child is not born yet. The child already lives and that life in the womb is sacred and holy, must be carefully nurtured. If the mother drinks or smokes or uses drugs, if she does not eat properly, if she lives in the midst of tension, strife, argument, noise and din, the life of the child will be grossly harmed by all and any of that. Indeed, if the child is not welcome in the womb, not wanted, the child is forever wounded, for the life in the womb will qualify the life to come.¹ The mother must live in the present in terms of the future, of the life to come.

It is no different with us now, here in this womb of life. How we live here will definitely affect the way we will live in the world to come. We cannot pretend therefore, that living with Heaven in mind is to be indifferent and casual about life here in the now.

One day this womb will open and we will pass through death to the eternal life we were created for. And so no one loves life more than the good Christian, for the good Christian knows the significance of life. And faith tells us, too, that this world, though it be a passing world, will in some way be made new and glorious at the Last Day. An enterprise we share in.

We literally live for God, day by day, for the reason that no other motive is big enough, adequate enough, strong enough to make life what it should be.

And not ironically but obviously, such a life on earth is the only really happy one. Living short of our destiny is to live a frustrated, inhibited, thwarted existence.

So, a feast like the Ascension is a great grace for calling us to love Heaven, to look Heavenward with new eagerness. "Where You have gone, we hope to go."

And He makes it, not possible, but certain.

These are not really matters for the head, for we know the Creed well enough. Rather, they are matters of the heart. These truths do not come alive until we live with them in quiet pondering. We ought return to them often, not only in sacrament and prayer, but frequently in other ways and times. Here lies true wisdom and great beauty. To deprive one's self of such communing is a pity, a great loss.

Let our hearts ascend to Heaven where Christ is, that here on earth we may already possess Him in faith, He whom we will one day encounter face to face.   Amen.

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1. Apropos of this sentence, the reader is referred to the pathos of Fr. Matthew's personal revelation in his homily of 1996 for the Mass for Respect for Life: ("She Would Abort It")