Jesus is Heaven !

Luke 24; 46-53 Ascension. May 16th,2010

Today we celebrate the great Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord into heaven. As you know, when we pray the Rosary, the Ascension is mentioned as the second Glorious Mystery. Remember, every mystery of the rosary has a particular grace assigned to it; and as we announce and contemplate the mystery of the Ascension, we pray for an increase in the grace of Hope. which is a Theological Virtue.
The celebration of the Ascension strengthens and nourishes our hope that one day, if we remain faithful Disciples of Christ by keeping His word, His commandments, His teachings, especially His commandment of love, we will join Him in heaven with the Father and all the saints. As Jesus has taken His human nature, his human body and soul to heaven, so too someday He will take to heaven those humans who have loved Him not only in word but also in deed.
Christ has gone before us into heaven and so we know that we are called there as well, this is the source of our great hope in this present life which in its great anxieties, trials, and sufferings can so often seem devoid of hope. Pope Benedict XVI writes, "The meaning of Christ's Ascension expresses our belief that in Christ the humanity we share (with Him) has entered in the inner life of God in a new and hitherto unheard of way. It means that man has found an everlasting place in God."....."we go to heaven to the extent we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him."
We could replace the word heaven in the pope’s comment with the word hope…we have hope to the extent we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him. Heaven is a person: "Jesus Himself is what we call heaven. And so to be in heaven means to be one with Jesus in a bond of endless love. This is our hope because Jesus is our hope.
This brings up one of the mistakes that many can make in their understanding about Christ ascension into heaven. The mistake is to think that Jesus is no longer with us here on earth. We can wrongly picture Jesus standing before the apostles and then floating up into the clouds disappearing from their sight. This is not what the language of the Gospel means. We have to understand the words of today's Gospel mystically; because they are speaking of great mysteries.
Mystically speaking what does it mean, as we are told in today's Gospel, "and he was taken up into heaven."? Well first of all Heaven is not a place up in the sky somewhere beyond the clouds or beyond the stars at the edge of the universe; nor is heaven some type of other dimension or parallel universe talk of which is so in vogue now a days; heaven is not the stuff of science fiction. Heaven is all around us because God is all around us. There is however a veil that separates heaven from us. Heaven goes beyond our senses; even though it is all around it transcends our ability to see it, touch it, taste it, hear it or smell it. Yet is more a reality around us than which we can sense; heaven transcends our senses.
To be taken up into heaven means then to enter through that veil or to have the veil removed; it is to go beyond our sense perception and behold that which we can only see now through the eyes of faith. To be taken up into heaven is to behold that reality above all other realities which no eye as seen, no ear has heard nor has never even entered into the mind of man. It is to see that God who is all around as He truly is, to behold Him face to face, which means to become One with Him in a eternal union of unending Love. Heaven is the ultimate reality, more real than what we can see, smell, hear, touch, or taste.
At His ascension then Jesus in His human body, entered through that veil and became the way, in fact the only way for us to enter through as well. And so Jesus' humanity has become a type of doorway or bridge from earth to heaven. And so where He has gone in His human nature we can also go with Him, in Him and through Him.
Hang with me here... Because of the ascension, Jesus' Human body is now present both on earth and in heaven at the same time. And so in His Human body heaven and earth become one. In Jesus, heaven and earth unite. Where Jesus is, is heaven; Jesus is heaven. And so as I said at the beginning, Jesus is the way to heaven and so As Pope Benedict said, " we go to heaven to the extent we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him."
The fact of the matter is, and this is very, very important to understand....the fact of the matter is, Jesus is still on earth. Not just spiritually, not just in the minds and hearts of the faithful, not just mystically in his body the Church. Jesus is still present on earth in his human, corporal, physical and resurrected body. His human body, with all that makes up a human body: His hands and feet, His bones and blood and yes, His Human Heart alive and beating.
The ascension was merely the end of His visible presence on earth, not the end of His physical presence on earth. Don't ever say, "when Jesus was on earth; and if you hear someone else say that correct them immediately. To say when Jesus was on earth is heresy. Jesus is still on earth, He is still on earth; He is still on earth.
But where is the body of Jesus on earth as it is in heaven? In the Holy Eucharist of course. When we are in the presence of the Holy Eucharist we are at the same time both on earth and in heaven at the same time as well. Where Jesus is there is heaven. Whether we encounter the Holy Eucharist, which is Jesus in His resurrected and ascended body, at Mass or outside of Mass in the tabernacle or at hours of adoration through Jesus in the Holy Eucharist we enter through that veil that separates heaven and earth.
Yes we can't see with our human eyes the body of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist because we can't see Heaven. Yet, through faith we can know with certainty that He is really there and we can touch Him. "In faith God present in the Holy Eucharist can come to us, and show himself to the eyes of our heart."
Because Jesus is still on earth in the Holy Eucharist we discover that this, "The Mystery of Our Faith," is our hope in the present life of struggle and fear. But we must believe with our whole hearts and minds that He is really there in the tabernacle and on our altars after the words of consecration are spoken; and we must, we must, if we are to possess hope, live out that belief by adoring Him in the Holy Eucharist, falling on our knees and crying out in love, "Oh my God I believe, please help my unbelief. The Eucharist is our resurrected and ascended Lord. The Eucharist is Jesus and where Jesus is there is our hope, there is Heaven on earth.
Faith alone helps us to believe that just as Jesus is present in a human body at the right hand of His father, He will shortly be present in His human body on this very altar. And faith in this true bodily presence is the cause of our hope…Jesus in His body has never left earth, He is still here in His Body in the Eucharist. Those who believe this have hope, those who do not have no hope…Those who adore Jesus frequently in faith, not only at Mass but before His true bodily presence in the tabernacle, will have their hope increased that one day they shall see Jesus as He is, the veil of the appearance of bread and wine will be lifted from their minds and they will be with Him and in Him forever…Let us turn to Our Lady for help…Holy Mary, Mother of our hope, Queen of Peace, pray for us. Come Holy Spirit, Come by means of the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Your well-beloved spouse. Amen.