Mark 16:15-20, Feast of the Ascencion of the Lord

Mom’s parents didn’t want her to move out when she and dad got married. Their house was large enough to fit us all, especially since mom’s siblings were migrating soon. And dad’s family was poor. I grew up in a very emotionally complex house, especially because my grandparents were mostly angry people. Oh, we were very comfortable grandchildren. Never had to worry about what to eat, wear, or who to run to. But I had to please and appease too many elders. I had lots of leg exercises, by the way: up on my toes and walking on eggshells! Yet I never grew taller than 4’11.5”. Just a half inch taller than Nora Aunor. “What’s half an inch short of 5 feet, God? Is that too much to ask?”

Can you imagine how thrilled I was to fly here for college? Dad, mom, and Jon dropped me off. The day they were to return to Davao, dad said on the phone, “’Nel, anak, if you don’t like it here, you can always come back, okay?” You know what, sisters and brothers, I was this close to saying, “Dad, my bags are packed, wait for me!” I was terrified. I honestly thought I wouldn’t make it alone, away from my family, my emotionally complex, up-on-my-toes, walking-on-eggshells, angry-grandparents family! Cold feet!

Since Jesus disappeared into the heavens around 2,024 years ago, he’s had 2.5 billion followers and counting. (Cristiano Ronaldo has only 629 million. Taylor Swift, 550 million.) Per projections, Jesus will have some 3 billion followers by 2050 while Ronaldo and Swift followers will have moved on to the next superstars. Not bad for our Jesus, don’t you think? Someone who didn’t father kids, kick a ball, or write a song! And one decisive reason why Jesus’ heritage has lasted all this time? He shared his power. “These signs will accompany those who believe. In my name they will drive out demons, speak new languages, pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” And these really happened, you know. His friends were really able to dispel bad spirits, speak new languages as missionaries, escape the Romans long enough to build communities even as far as India! Most of all, they were healers, if not physically, I bet, spiritually. All this they did after Jesus ascended to the Father and disappeared from the Apostles’ earthly eyes.

But I don’t think his friends would ever have realized how much power they had to keep going if Jesus didn’t “disappear.” If Jesus stuck around after the Resurrection, I imagine his friends would rather tail him around like usual. If ever they were sent off for mission, they’d never have wanted to be gone from Jesus for too long, because they’d always second-guess themselves, over-calibrate their moves, wonder if they were doing the right thing. But because Jesus ascended and “disappeared” into the clouds, his friends, well, “ascended,” too! They upped their lives, found their own groove, gained self-confidence, trusted each other, prayed together. By the time the last Apostle died, they had a Christian community going in as far as India! Can you imagine?

Jesus’ Ascension didn’t mark Jesus’ absence from our world. On the contrary, he is now more deeply present with us. With his body and soul glorified, Jesus is clear of whatever contained and constrained him on earth, free of whoever stifled, arrested, or kept him away from humanity. Ascension is not abandonment, but deeper presence. Furthermore, Jesus’ Ascension is not a move away from the human side and into God’s side. We often try to protect God’s holiness by thinking that God and humanity are on two different sides of reality. Yet, from the Old Testament all the way to the New, and beyond, God has always revealed that where humanity is, there, God is, too. And whatever power God gave his Son has, we also share in some significant measure. For haven’t we driven out “demons” from family and society in many ways? Haven’t we spoken “different languages” to different people and gotten our message across? Haven’t we risen from many kinds of death? Most of all, aren’t we healers, too (shout out to moms today, who slathered Vicks Vaporub all over us when we got sick, fed us Royco alphabet soup to get us to eat, and held us tight at the doctor’s clinic)? Jesus didn’t ascend and disappear into the heavens only to leave his friends to fend for themselves, powerless. All the deeper and more present is he here on earth because of the Ascension.

A favorite line from Khalil Gibran goes: “When you part from your friend, you grieve not. For that which you love most in his presence may be clearer in his absence.” When people dear to us have to “disappear” for some reason, whether to go back home, or to stay home as we build our own lives away from them, or well, go to heaven—how we truly appreciate and miss the love that descended from them towards us, their encouragement that elevated us so we’d believe in ourselves, their constant support that gave us a better future, their self-chosen deaths that kept us alive, their healing. What we often forget is how much power we have which they taught us, given us and trained us for: the power to do the very same things to others in turn. But first, they had to disappear…so that we may in turn rise.

A practical lesson here, perhaps, if I may: that we shore up strength to disappear from people we love at some point, especially from our children, if we really want them to “ascend” in life and realize how much power they have to be survivors like us. Trust me, what they loved in our presence will be clearer in our absence. When mom and dad disappeared, neither they nor I knew how much power they had shared me with me which would pull me through not just college but the rest of my life. Like me, they just need to be assured that we’re just a phone call or a prayer away.

Happy Ascension to us all. And Happy Mothers’ May to all the mothers and all the like-a-mother’s.

*Image from Shutterstock