Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily on the Ascension May 12.
When we were children we imitated our parents and wanted to participate in what they were doing, so even though we were clumsy, they gave us things to do to help out.
We unloaded the dishwasher even though we didn’t know where everything really went. We pulled weeds even though some of them weren’t really weeds. We wrapped packages and people could tell right away that we had helped.
Our parents gave us responsibilities because they wanted us to know that they counted on us and that we had something to contribute — however imperfectly — for the benefit of the family.
What is true in our families is true also in our relationship with God. Faithful believers want to imitate God and participate in what he’s doing in our world, so though we’re clumsy, God gives us things to do to help out. Even though God is the true creator of all things, he lets parents help create the next generation — and especially mothers who actually bear this new life into the world, mothers who we honor especially today.
Even though Jesus is the true Savior of the world, he lets us believers help bring this salvation to others — and especially, as he tells us in today’s Gospel just before ascending into heaven, so “that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” And indeed, when he then says “You are witnesses of these things” and promises that we will be “clothed with power from on high,” he means that he has given us a role in spreading the Good News and mediating God’s presence in our lives and the lives of others.
Through ordination God has given me the power to make Jesus present for you sacramentally by changing bread and wine into his body and blood really present for us to eat and drink and adore. And he has given you parents the role of teaching your children to recognize God’s presence in the sacraments and in the world around us.
And as they grow, their image of God will be very similar to their image of you, their earthly mother and father. That’s a sobering thought! If you are loving and tender, they’ll experience God as loving and tender, and they’ll be attracted to him. But if you’re judgmental or unreliable, they may develop an unhealthy fear of God or have trouble trusting him. In any event, he often has to come back later (just like our earthly parents) and clean up the mess that we, his clumsy children, have made.
Even so, he continues to give us responsibilities because he wants us to know that he counts on us and that we have something to contribute — however imperfectly — for the benefit of others.
On this feast of the Ascension, which this year is also Mother’s Day, we recall especially our mothers, who were for most of us the first person to introduce us to God.
He used our mother to create us — with a little help from dad — and to bring us into the world, and then they brought us to the Church to be baptized, born again, this time into the Kingdom of God. They taught us to observe all that Jesus commands and to discover his loving presence in prayer, worship and the events of daily life.
My mother, like many of yours, has fulfilled faithfully her God-given responsibilities in my regard, for which I, like you, am deeply indebted and eternally grateful.
And of course as a consequence, you and I now have responsibilities in their regard: they now count on us to care for them as needed as they grow older and to pray for them, both in this life and once they have died, that the heaven to which Jesus ascends today may also one day be their eternal home — and ours — as well.
