Abbot Placid’s Homily – The Ascension of the Lord
June 1, 2025

As we move this year through these fifty days of rejoicing over the resurrection of Our
Lord Jesus Christ, we come today to the great Solemnity of the Ascension. This is not simply a
recalling of the fact that at some point after his resurrection Jesus left the earth to return to
heaven. Far more than that, this feast invites us to contemplate the immense creativity of the love
which God is, and to wonder at God’s immeasurable mercy. We heard of that great creative love
at the Easter Vigil as the beautiful text of the Easter Proclamation echoed through this basilica in
the gentle light of the newly-enkindled paschal candle: “O love, O charity beyond all telling, to
ransom a slave you gave away your Son. O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely
by the death of Christ. O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”
Today’s feast invites us to wonder at the mystery of the Incarnation of the eternal Son of
God, through whom God’s mercy has been poured out on all mankind. As we are taught in the
Book of Genesis in the story of the Fall, human beings, created in the divine image and likeness
for intimate friendship with God, rejected that noble call and alienated themselves from God
through disobedience. Yet at that very time, God, grieved in His love for lost humankind,
determined in a way too wondrous to be imagined not just to restore his creatures to friendship,
but to exalt them to a yet more intimate union with Himself. God sent His Son, the very imprint
of the Father’s being, to unite to himself our own human nature so that in Jesus Christ Our Lord,
man might restore by obedience what man had lost by disobedience. As the Letter to the
Hebrews, from which our second reading today was taken, tells us elsewhere: Son though he
was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the
source of eternal salvation for all who obey him (Heb. 5:8-9). In that obedience, a virtue little
prized in the world and in the church today, Jesus willingly submitted to the most heinous
injustice and crime of all time and gave himself up to death in his agony on the cross. Because of
that freely chosen obedience and trust in his Father’s power and great love, God raised him up in
his human body never again subject to death. In his rising, all of those united with him in our
common human nature have also been raised up.
Today, in the Lord’s Ascension, that humanity once barred from paradise because of sin
is not restored to that paradise, but is instead far more greatly exalted. For we contemplate today
that our human nature has been united with the divine nature in the Lord’s Ascension as the

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Apostle teaches in the Letter to the Ephesians: God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great
love he had for us…brought us to life with Christ…raised us up with him, and seated us with him
in the heavens in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:4-6). We thus see revealed fully in the Lord’s Ascension
the inheritance begun in each of us in our baptism. That is the cause of the exultant prayer of the
church at the beginning of this Mass: “Gladden us with holy joys, almighty God, and make us
rejoice with devout thanksgiving, for the Ascension of Christ your Son is our exaltation, and,
where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope.” Likewise, as we
conclude our celebration today, having been nourished with the life-giving Body and Blood of
Christ, we will once again confidently pray: “Almighty ever-living God, who allow those on
earth to celebrate divine mysteries, grant, we pray, that Christian hope may draw us onward to
where our nature is united with you.” Repeat these prayer, brothers and sisters, through this
coming final week of our Easter celebration for this year that, amidst the trials, the challenges
and the sufferings of this life we may ever be refreshed by hope in this wondrous gift of God’s
love for us.
This Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension is likewise the glorification of God’s boundless
mercy. For in his appearance to the disciples the night of the resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ
showed them his hands and his side, the price he had paid for the salvation of the world, with the
words, Peace be with you. Eight days later, he likewise healed the doubts of Thomas by the
invitation: Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe (John 20: 27). The Lord’s Ascension invites us to be not
unbelieving, but to believe in the immensity of God’s mercy. For the Ascension is the sealing of
God’s judgment on the Evil One and the rulers of this world. It is the assurance that all the
injustice, the cruel suffering of the innocent and powerless, the endless inhumanity of human
beings to one another, and even the cowardice and treachery of these days in our own Church of
Charlotte, will one day be judged. Let the hope of us sinners, then, be strengthened by risen and
ascended body of the Lord, which has carried his wounds, the marks of the injustice, cruelty and
inhumanity of human beings to one another, to the very heart of God for all eternity. There, the
Son intercedes unceasingly to the Father for us, his brothers and sisters who share with him in
our human nature. Let us confidently hope, then, that the righteous judgements of God may yet
be tempered by those wound in the hands the Son always holds out in intercession, and that the

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tender love of Jesus for us sinners may yet draw from the heart of God the boundless gift of His
mercy.
As we contemplate the beauty of this feast today, let us not neglect the instruction we
have been given today by the Scriptures. In both the reading from the Acts of the Apostles as
well as in the Gospel, we are commanded by Jesus to be his witnesses, and to preach repentance
and the forgiveness of sins. Our testimony will be that much more convincing to the extent that
we ourselves do penance and freely forgive those who have offended us. Lest we feel unable to
carry out this mission, the Scriptures today also twice remind us that, by the coming of the Holy
Spirit, we will be clothed with power from on high. Let us take care not to conceive of this
power according to the values of this world, such as the Apostles did when they asked the Lord,
Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel. For the power we are to receive
is not what is considered power by this world. The Scriptures today also remind us that it was
necessary for Christ to suffer. The power we are to be given is the power of charity, the same
charity which the Lord showed in handing himself over for our sake. It is the charity which is the
mark of the true disciples of Jesus. It is the charity that bears all things, believes all things, hopes
all things, endures all things, the charity that never fails (I Cor. 13.7-8).