Mystical Word – Ascension Sunday 2025
Readings for the Ascension Sunday, June 1
Acts 7:55-60 | Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20 | John 17:20-26
The end of the world is way better than you think.
There is a plethora of literature about the end of the world. Movies and television shows often treat the theme and make it their main subject. As a culture, we seem oftentimes obsessed with predictions of the end and with how the Bible factors in to this vision. Many Christians firmly believe the end is coming, and soon. Many proclaim Jesus is about to come back. The early church lived with a vivacious expectation of the second coming of Jesus. But, we hear that phrase, namely “the second coming,” and we might wince or dismiss it. It is, however, a core Catholic belief. In today’s first reading, an angel says to the gathered disciples as they watch Jesus ascend into heaven, “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” Jesus will return. What does it mean to believe Jesus will return? What is the second coming?
The second coming of Jesus is also called the Parousia. The Parousia is when God through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit decisively appears and triumphs over all evil. At the second coming, there will be a final judgment. About this last judgment, the Catechism declares, “In the presence of Christ, who is Truth itself, the truth of each man's relationship with God will be laid bare.” In the language of many books of the Bible, the second coming is when God will be fully revealed as our God and we will definitely be God’s people. The Parousia is when God will be all in all, when salvation will happen in a final and definitive way, when God will utterly transform all things. We will be risen from the dead and the material universe will be wholly changed. There will be a new heavens and a new earth. It is the full manifestation of the Eschaton.
This is our hope based on the Risen and Ascended Christ. All of creation, at the dawning of the second coming of Jesus, will be completely transfigured. All will share in God’s own life. Truly, God is our final goal. The Eschaton is the mercy and mystery of God. Meister Eckhart says, “The final goal of being is the darkness or the unknowability of the hidden divinity.” Our home is the mystery of God, and that mystery is pure mercy.
We share in this final reality right now through faith. Our second reading says, “May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened.” We can know the Eschaton, the hidden divinity and unknowability of God, here and now. We can hasten the Eschaton by taking the Gospel path of enlightenment that results in the deep knowledge of God. The final mystery, the Eschaton, can begin now as we each realize oneness with God. Such enlightenment occurs as we let go, die to self, and abide in the Presence of God within us. The transformation of the cosmos begins with me, right here and right now.
Theologian Anthony Kelly movingly writes, “The whole mystery of salvation is oriented to bring to completion the living dialogue with God that is the basic feature of our being. Though we coexist or ‘in-exist’ within material creation, we are more. We ‘ex-ist,’ that is, we ‘stand out’ from material creation in an immediate and conscious relationship to God. This is what distinguishes the human creature from all else in the material universe. To be human is to be beholden to the ‘No-thing’ that is outside all creation. It is to be faced with the ‘No One’ that is like no one else. For the spirit inhabits a limitless ‘Nowhere’ beyond all boundaries and locations. It touches on the ‘No Time,’ the eternal, which gives meaning and direction to all our days. It is a living relationship to the utterly transcendent and unimaginably immanent ‘Other,’ who is the source of all being.”
Each one of us enjoys this relationship with the Holy Mystery this very moment. The Incomprehensible Nothingness is within us, which we can as we let go of our thinking, and rest in faith. If we practice this letting go, we will change. We will be renewed, and God will ask us to share this enjoyment of the Divine Mystery with everyone around us. Jesus said to his disciples: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” God wills the salvation of all and wants all to experience the divine happiness without delay. When we hand ourselves over trustingly to the Holy Mystery, we discover the Parousia can begin now, and the universe will never be the same.