The Ascension of the Lord : 12 May 2002

A detail from a painting by Giovanni Cimabue, in the lower level of the Basilica at Assisi.

The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in San Francisco

Homilies from the National Shrine
of Saint Francis of Assisi

THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASCENSION
12 MAY 2002

[Acts 1:1–11; Ephesians 1:17–23; Matthew 28:16–20]

AT THE CONCLUSION of the narrative associated with the Great Commissioning, we hear Jesus proclaim that all power in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. He tells the Eleven who are present with Him upon the mountain in Galilee, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Then He says, “Behold, I am always with you, until the end of the age” (Mt 28: 16–20). The Greek text of Matthew puts it this way: “I-with-you-AM.” Rhetorically, the final words of Jesus at the time of his Ascension bear a close relationship with a similar phrase that culminates the very first chapter of the same gospel.

Do you remember the seemingly endless genealogy (Mt 1: 1–17) with which the Gospel of Matthew begins? Through that recapitulation of the generations, the evangelist neatly summarizes the History of Salvation and places Jesus the Christ in a kind of oblique relationship first to Abraham and the Patriarchs, then to David and the Kings, and finally to that faithful remnant of Judah that returned from Exile in Babylon. I call it an oblique relationship, because first Matthew tells us that “so-and-so begat so-and-so” and continues along a trajectory of lineal, that is to say, of biological, descent down to Joseph, the husband of Mary. Then, we are told, it is “of her” that the Messiah, Jesus, was born (Mt 1: 16).

That whole section, the very first part of the Gospel, asserts that there are fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen again from David to the Babylonian Exile and fourteen from the Babylonian Exile to the Messiah (Mt 1: 17). That’s kind of nifty, isn’t it? The problem is, it’s not right. Count them some day, and you’ll find that there are only thirteen generations from the Babylonian Exile to the Messiah. Now please don’t tell me that Matthew couldn’t perform elementary arithmetical operations. He was a tax collector (cf. Mt 9: 9–10); if he could do anything, he could count. So where, or perhaps it would be better to ask who, is the lost fourteenth generation?

The Gospel begins with concern for the generations according to which God’s saving plan is revealed. Moreover, that first chapter concludes with the repetition of the promise that God first uttered through the prophet Isaiah, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, with-us-God” (Is 7: 14 LXX; Mt 1: 23). “With us God!” the Gospel begins; “with you I AM!” the Gospel concludes. Thus, a promise is made and a promise is fulfilled and God is shown to be faithful to His promise in spite of the violence of King Herod’s rage, the ambivalence of the Galilean crowds, the jealousy of the Pharisees, the conspiracy of the Sadducees, the treachery of Judas, the condemnation of the Roman Procurator, the cowardliness of the disciples, the humiliation of the cross, the devastation of death and the seeming finality of burial that intervene between the promise and its fulfillment.

Consistent with the motif of one generation begetting another and ever mindful of the fact that we are still missing a generation somewhere, the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel, that is to say, the fulfillment of the prophetic promise in the final earthly act of the Risen Messiah, seems itself to beget yet another promise. The followers of Jesus, the lost generation, so to speak, are commissioned to increase their ranks by preaching the Word and by celebrating the Sacraments with Jesus, the Risen and now Ascendant Messiah, until the end of the age when that same Christ will come again.

Saint Francis of Assisi was absolutely convinced that once the whole world, the lost generation as it were, had had the opportunity to receive or reject the Gospel of Salvation, Christ would come again. And because he wanted to see Jesus in the flesh in his lifetime, he rededicated himself and his brothers to the evangelical activity enjoined upon all Christians in the Great Commission that we have heard today. Through the last eight centuries, thanks to the humility and sincerity of Saint Francis and other more contemporary disciples of Christ like him, many persons of the lost generation throughout the non-Christian world who had never heard the Gospel preached, as well as persons of the lost generation in close contact with Christian culture who nonetheless had never heard the Gospel preached credibly, came to believe and were saved. For us to be faithful to the Great Commission, as first the Apostles and later Saint Francis were faithful to it, we too must preach the Gospel credibly to a contemporary culture already saturated with both Christianity and cynicism.

These days, the news media is, as we all know, filled with accounts of unthinkable priestly crimes and apparent hierarchical cover-ups and though we are worn down by the enormity of it all, the fact is that we are still confronted by these problems and must not allow ourselves to be inured by the daily repetition of accusations too awful to ignore. My almost continuous personal reflection on this cluster of issues compels me to speak once again upon this subject even at the risk of wearying you further. At no time has it ever been more clear to me just what is at stake in the scandals that threaten to overwhelm the Church. For the world regards even those elements of the Church that are virtuous and pure as irrelevant and archaic. But when, as in this present moment, other elements of the Church have been complicit in sexual predation upon children, it is clear that the central mission of Christianity, to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is necessarily reduced to scorn. How then can we fulfill the Great Commission in our times?

The answer is right in front of us, both textually and practically. For the Great Commission itself both embodies and proclaims the baptismal message of conversion and purification, so as to experience reconciliation with the Father and with one another. The Church today must renew its baptismal commitment not only in the Easter rituals that we celebrate with song and ceremony, but to the Resurrection values these sacred rites proclaim.

Now I don’t claim to know precisely how that renewal will play out in the formulation of procedures to protect children within Church politics and to reach out to victims in need of healing. Personally speaking, however, I do favor the most draconian penalties admissible in civil and canon law to censure pedophile or ephebophile priests. Anyway, what I favor and even what any given bishop favors is by now almost completely irrelevant. No district attorney, no child protective service agency, and no civil authority in the land will likely hesitate any longer to subpoena, depose, censure, sue, arrest, charge, or jail a Catholic ordinary who attempts to sweep clerical abuse under the ecclesiastical carpet. Moreover, it seems to me, that whether they are ready or not, all the bishops and major superiors in this country, and the rank and file clergy as well, will henceforth be held to a higher standard of conduct regarding accusations against clerical, religious and lay personnel than any other kind of administrator in America. In the present environment, any weakness or indecision or loss of nerve on the part of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops or any indication whatsoever that there are still bishops out there who just don’t get it will be instantly broadcast throughout the world and held up to the ridicule and shame that such moral ineptitude rightly provokes. Frankly, this is as it should be.

The Church, in the language of Matthew’s Gospel, is a city upon a hill that cannot be hidden, a light set upon a lampstand so that it may illumine the house (Mt 5: 14–15). It is, therefore, of the very nature of the Church to purify herself in the public forum. And purify herself she must, even when the agents of her purification are secular authority and public opinion. The Sacred Scripture in both Testaments is replete with examples of God using the nations to chastise and reform His chosen people.

The urgency of this purification is intimately bound up with the urgency of our Lord’s Great Commission. For the Church still has work to do so that Christ may come again in glory to judge the living and the dead in our time. Now I am not just speaking of baptizing Muslims and Buddhists and converting atheists and enemies of religion, although I’d be delighted to make some progress in those directions too. No, the immediate work that the Church must do right now lies in recovering the credibility needed to preach the Gospel, and an important place to start is to take national leadership in matter of protecting children from sexual abuse and offering to victims some hope for healing.

Now why should Catholic priests and bishops deliberately invite the near certain ridicule that will surely be heaped upon them for addressing such concerns nationally at this present moment given all the moral weakness that has been so painfully exposed in Church leadership? Why not just lay low for a few months, or years, or decades? Firstly, because there are victims who stand in need of God’s healing graces, who need to know that they are not at fault for what has happened to them. And secondly because there are millions more children, boys and girls, who are molested every day, not by just by sick clergy, but by their parents, their aunts and uncles, their teachers, and all manner of adults who stray in and out of their lives. Even a cursory examination of the statistics of child sexual abuse in this country make it abundantly clear that clergy, even if Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy were considered together, couldn’t possibly account for more than a small fraction of what actually takes place.

That a Catholic priest, in this present environment of clerical abuse and violation of trust, should have the temerity to speak on this issue strikes us all as ironic, I'm sure. Nonetheless, it is an irony I am prepared to embrace, for the Risen Christ commanded His disciples to observe all that He taught them and to teach others to do so as well. This demand for justice enjoined upon us by Jesus impacts every contemporary disciple, for in order credibly to preach justice, the Church must act justly, even to the point of disclosing wrongdoing when it is painful, embarrassing and costly to do so. The Catholic Church must put its own house in order because, if we have not entered into the promised land yet, then secular society certainly hasn’t crossed over the Jordan either. Governmental agencies can and should impose and enforce laws to protect children, and the Church must respect and obey them, but secular society cannot legislate so as to change what is in a person’s heart. Only Christ acting through His Church can gather together the lost generation and reconcile it to the Father. The world still needs the moral leadership that only a renewed and purified Church can offer, and that is why the Lord’s Great Commission still places new and vigorous demands upon us.

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed at all of this, then I congratulate you for having stayed with me throughout this very long homily. To be quite candid, I feel overwhelmed too, at least as much as you do, maybe more. But I remember that Jesus said, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. . . and behold, with you I AM, even to end of the age. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Friar Francisco Nahoe, OFM Conv.
THE NATIONAL SHRINE OF SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Pax Christi et bonum