Free Republic

Love Lifted Me – A Homily for Ascension By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn more dioceses than not, the Feast of the Ascension is celebrated this weekend. The liturgist in me regrets the move, but here we are any way. So let’s ascend with the Lord, three days late!This marvelous feast is not merely about something that took place two thousand years ago. For though Christ our head has ascended, we the members of his body are ascending with him. Since he was ascended, we too have ascended. In my own life as a Christian, I am brought higher every year...

Dear sons and brothers and friends in Jesus Christ, ON THIS SOLEMNITY of the Ascension of our Lord, the Pope is happy to offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice with you and for you. I am happy to be with the students and staff of the Venerable English College in this year in which you are celebrating your fourth centenary. And today, in a special way, I feel spiritually close to you, to your parents and families, and to all the faithful of England and Wales – to all who are united in the faith of Peter and Paul, in the faith...

A short excerpt from "The Ascension: The Beginning of a New Nearness," from Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts (Ignatius, 2006): You are surely familiar with all those precious, naïve images in which only the feet of Jesus are visible, sticking out of the cloud, at the heads of the apostles. The cloud, for its part, is a dark circle on the perimeter; on the inside, however, blazing light. It occurs to me that precisely in the apparent naïveté of this representation something very deep comes into view. All we see of Christ in the time of history are...

Thursday May 24, 2001 Sixth Week of Easter Reading (Acts 18:1-8) Gospel (St. John 16:16-20) As the Apostles were discussing this question of what Jesus would mean by, "Within a short time you will not see Me, and then you will see Me again," they did not understand possibly what that meant. Of course we can look back on it and see that it meant He was going to die and then He was going to rise from the dead. This part of the Gospel of St. John was prior to our Lord's death and so it was not a...