Ascension Thursday is the most under-understood mystery of religion.
Because we experience many painful goodbyes in life. There are so many times when someone we love has to go away, or we have to go away. There are many times when, for whatever reason, someone has to move on and irrevocably change a relationship. Almost always this is painful, sometimes so painful that it leaves us feeling restless and empty, as if all the color, energy, and joy have gone out of our lives.
The pain in this kind of letting go is often excruciating, as parents know, but to refuse is to deny the opportunity for new life.
But, as we know, usually this isn't the end of the story. Most of the time, after the restless, dark heartache of a painful goodbye has worn off, we experience the opposite, a deep joy in sensing now our loved one's presence in a different way.
Parents experience this when their children grow up and leave home to start lives of their own. At first, when a child leaves home to go to college, to get married, or to take a job elsewhere, we are often left with a restless heartache that leaves us feeling empty. But, after a while, especially when our child, now an adult comes back to visit us our heartache can just as quickly disappear because our loved one, now no longer a child, can offer us a richer love and presence than he or she could when they were little. The pain of losing someone turns into the joy of finding something deeper in the one whom we thought we had lost.
When Jesus was preparing his disciples for his ascension, he told them: "It is better for you that I go away! You won't understand this now. You will grieve and have heavy hearts, but, later, this will turn to joy and you will understand why I have to do this because, unless I go away, I can't send you my spirit."
This is the experience of the people of Divine Mercy when their pastor chose to leave their church. Initially, they were in shock, disbelief, angry and deeply feeling lost and abandoned. That’s how I found this congregation in February with tears in their eyes and empty hearts. My mantra, “one day at a time” and trust in the spirit of Jesus that you will get through this trauma. Now let’s fast forward to what occurred this past week.
Erick, a parishioner, had been working side by side with their pastor and he felt the pain of lost and disbelief. However, he was determined that the parish would not close permanently. In March, after a two-week hiatus, Divine Mercy reopened its doors and welcomed all people Mexican and Anglo back to church. I flew to Las Vegas to help bring First Communion to over 70 children, yes you read that right, 70 beautiful children. Then a week later, Bishop John flew to Las Vegas to confirm 40 young adults and incarnate Erick as a deacon to serve the parish while the search began for a new pastor.
Well, from their moment of darkness and heartache when their former pastor chose to leave, the spirit was nurturing a vocation inside the heart of Deacon Erick to become a priest. So the journey began and with the help of Fr. Don who zoomed instructions in the PNCC tradition to this humble man of faith, Bishop John called Erick last Tuesday and informed him that he would gladly come to Divine Mercy to consecrate him a Catholic priest. Erick shared with me that he sobbed on the phone in joy and said “of course” another “God Moment.”
So the lesson in faith is that good bye does not mean the end of a relationship or in this case a parish. Rather, the paradox of presence and absence in love is a great mystery. We need to be present to each other physically, but we also need to be gone from each other at times. We bring a blessing both when we visit someone and when we leave after the visit is over. Presence is partly predicated on absence and there is something of our spirit that we can only give by going away. Why is this so?
Because absence is sometimes the only thing that can purify presence. When we are physically present, there are always certain tensions, irritations, disappointments, flaws in our bodies, and faults in our character that partially block full love and blessing. That's why we rarely appreciate our loved ones fully, until they are taken away from us.
Absence can help wash clean. What the pain of absence does is stretch our hearts so that the essence, the beauty, the love, and the gift of the one who is absent can flow to us without being colored by the tensions, disappointments, and the flaws of everyday life.
As well, the other's absence can work to stretch our hearts so that we can receive him or her in a way that more fully accepts and respects who he or she really is. In the case of this parish’s former pastor, his absence stretches the people of Divine Mercy need for forgiveness.
The Ascension of Our Lord is about going away so that his loved ones can fully receive his spirit. It's about the mystery of saying goodbye, when goodbye isn't really goodbye at all, but only love's way of taking on a different modality so that it can be present in a way that's deeper, purer, more permanent, less-clinging, and less-limited by the tensions, disappointments, inadequacies, wounds, and betrayals that, this side of eternity, forever make our intimacy a work in progress.
Now the “good news” even gets better. Last Thursday, on the Feast of the Ascension, Deacon Erick was interviewed on a Spanish radio station and announced to the people of Las Vegas that Bishop John Mack, the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Bishop of the Polish National Catholic Church will be coming to Las Vegas to ordain him a Catholic priest on Wednesday, June 7th at Divine Mercy Catholic Parish, another “God moment.”
This will not be a private ceremony, but rather a joyous occasion for Deacon Erick. his family from Mexico, the faithful Divine Mercy parishioners who stuck around to see what was going to happen to this parish, and a calling to all the former parishioners who have strayed away to return and attend this once in a lifetime spiritual ceremony. An ordination to the Catholic priesthood of a local parishioner. In celebration of this event, I received notice that nine priests from around the country plan to attend the ordination in support of their brother priest.
The people at Divine Mercy are no strangers to the pain of saying goodbye to friends. But they are a resilient faith community and they want all their Mexican and Anglo friends to come back to Divine Mercy and join them in prayer and service so that we follow the words of our Jesus that “ALL MAY BE ONE.”
Mark your calendars and save the date. Wednesday, June 7th (TIME OF MASS TBA). Let Today’s Sonshine go viral on the internet, in others words please forward this Sonshine to all your family and friends as well as all of Las Vegas to join this parish for this once in a lifetime spiritual event in which Jesus is truly present on Divine Mercy’s altar in the love and faith of all its people so that “WE ALL MAY BE ONE.”
