By Fr. Roy Cimagala
A number of very meaningful considerations can be drawn from the Ascension of Our Lord into heaven.
One is that, with it, we are reminded that, like Christ, who is the pattern of our humanity and the redeemer of our damaged humanity, we actually came from heaven and are meant to return there for our definitive state of life after “passing” the test God has given us if what he wants us to be is also what we ourselves would like to be.
With our Lord’s Ascension, we are told that heaven is now open to humanity after it has been closed due to the fall of our first parents. We have been alienated from our Father God and are now reconciled through the redemptive work of Christ.
Our Lord’s Ascension also brings home to us our true home, which is heaven where there will be “no more tears, pain or death” (cfr. Revelation 21:1-4) where “no eye has seen, nor ear heard or the heart of man conceived,” (cfr. 1 Corinthians 2:9)
It’s there where we become a new creation, achieve the perfection of our humanity, and where we enjoy endless peace and bliss.
We really need to develop a yearning for heaven, but doing so by being keenly aware of our duties here on earth. The latter are our daily ordinary pathways to heaven, aside from the sacred means Christ has given us. Yes, we have to always keep heaven in mind and live our earthly life with this goal in sight, using our daily duties and experiences as pathways to reach God.
Yes, as we yearn for heaven, we should be keenly aware of our duties here on earth. We need to see the organic connection between our earthly life and duties and our heavenly yearning. We cannot have one without the other.
In this regard, we have to do a lot of apostolates which would require of us that we, first of all, should be driven with love for God. Otherwise, our apostolate, our love for others, would have no steam to run on.
We need to see to it that our love for God always grows every day, so that our love for others would also correspondingly grow. In this, we have to realize, first of all, how much God loves us. Only then can we start loving him and loving others.
That is why we have to pray and consider the truths of our faith that show us much more than what our senses can discover. We can say that a person who does not pray is a person who cannot fall in love properly.
That’s because a prayerless love is a love that is simply driven by earthly elements that cannot last for long and cannot cope with all the demands of true love. It’s love that would be completely at the mercy of earthly and temporal conditions.
With sincere prayer, we would manage to keep our minds and hearts, our thoughts and desires to somehow start and end in heaven. Thus, we can fulfill what St. Paul once said: “Set your hearts on heavenly things, not the things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:1)
We have to learn how to relate everything to heaven, and not get entangled with our merely earthly and temporal affairs. Everything is meant to start and end with God, who is the Creator of everything and the very foundation of reality./WDJ