Ascension of the Lord (C)

In 1908, The Times of London asked notable authors to respond to the following question: “What is wrong with the world?” In these heavy and somber days following the school massacre in Uvalde, yet still on the heels of the racially motivated shooting in Buffalo not two weeks ago, our entire country is asking the very same question: “What is wrong with the world?” Of those attempted answers put forward by the secular news media, I have admittedly read only a few, in part, because I suspect that I already know what they are going to say––or rather, what they are not going to say. And what I expect is that they will not answer the question in the way that G.K. Chesterton did over a century ago, which––to me, at least––seems to be the only answer to the question worth listening to. 

To the editor of The Times, Chesterton wrote this: “Dear Sir, Regarding your question ‘What is wrong with the world?,’ I am. Yours truly, G.K. Chesterton.” While in the wake of great tragedy people today (including myself) tend to react quickly by pointing fingers and calling for sweeping change, we also tend to overlook and fail to take seriously the deeper, underlying problem at the root of every act of human violence great and small: the fact that human nature, at its very core, is fatally wounded. In Chesterton’s pithy reply, he gets to the heart of the matter. He understands that he, wounded as he is, contributes to what is wrong with the world. 

On Chesterton’s view of things, the only proper response to human violence is not first political but rather theological, for violence–and all evil–stem from the rejection of God and his law. And it is this rejection that has wounded humanity to its core. Sin lacerates human nature all the way down, and we experience all too frequently its effects: our cloudy minds struggle to grasp the truth, our fickle wills are turned toward malice, our aggrandizing desires for pleasure are out of check, and our timorous strength flees away before all which is difficult. To see that all of this is the case does not take the light of faith, for this much is obvious to anyone no matter their religious beliefs. Yet what our Christian faith does show us is that the healing and perfecting of our human nature is not something of which we ourselves are capable. 

The New Testament, in general, makes a sharp distinction between the world and Christ, which we classify theologically as the distinction between nature and grace. In the Gospel last Sunday, Jesus told his disciples that he gives peace “not as the world gives” it (Jn. 14:27). Grace is not only of a different quality than nature, it is of another kind altogether. Over the course of recent decades, the world has proceeded down a path of increasing secularization under the presupposition that it will at last become a more just, more equitable, and more peaceful place when the dying ember of religion has been doused by secular atheistic humanism. And in that time, we have seen the kind of peace that the world gives: it is the peace that yields 214 mass shootings in the United States in 2022, in more than 300 homicides per year in Baltimore, in a narcissistic dictator who has sustained war on an unthreatening country at the risk of a global nuclear catastrophe, and in the massacre of 19 children and two teachers in a school in Texas. 

Let facts be submitted to a candid world: the world of nature, apart from grace, is downright horrific. Nature, left to itself, will be left to itself, and the wounds of sin that fester in its core will continue their rampage of destruction upon all that is good on the earth. 

We are gathered here on this Ascension Day, not standing upon the heights of the Mount of Olives, but on this Cathedral Hill to likewise raise our eyes to Our Lord Jesus Christ. And yet the world has the gumption to ask, in the words of the angels from long ago but with an irony all its own, “Why are you standing there looking at the sky?” I ask in reply, “Where else should we look?” Certainly not to the world, for we have seen all too well that of which nature is capable. No, we Christians must turn to the Lord Most High, to the “great king over all the earth.” For it is the one who “reigns over the nations” who alone gives the peace the world simply cannot give. 

It is Christ who possesses the unique capacity to heal the wounds at the core of human existence that perpetuate these and every act of violence and thus bring true and perfect peace. And this is why this great feast of the Ascension is essential to the Christian life, especially in this present dark and difficult moment. The Ascension is the feast of our future glory, of what awaits us in the eternal life of heaven, when our humanity will be perfectly restored to all that it was before sin and all the more it can now become in light of the resurrection. Yet it is also the feast of our present triumph, for it is on this day, as we will pray, when Christ by ascending to the Father “placed at the right hand of [the Father’s] glory our weak human nature, which he had united to himself”. By taking his place in glory, he has not “distance[d] himself from our lowly state,” but from that place through “a most holy exchange” communicates to us all that is good, as in the words of Saint Paul, from “the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way” (Eph. 1:23). 

As Christ ascended, he took with him our wounded humanity; and from his place in heaven, he descends each day in his grace to fill us with every gift and heavenly blessing. His grace penetrates us to the core, overturning all the calamity that sin has caused in our hearts and enabling us to live vibrantly the blazing life of charity. His grace is poured into us nowhere more certainly and more powerfully than in the sacraments, as these are his preferred means of setting all that is within us to rights. 

Chesterton knew that he contributed to what is wrong with the world. While we are not directly responsible for the acts of violence that our nation has seen in recent weeks, we nevertheless are aware of the ways each and every day that we do our own part to add to the world’s misery. And on the last day, when all are brought before the judgment seat of Christ and the hearts of all are revealed, we will be shown what responsibility we and our wounded humanity do bear for all that is wrong with the world. Yet we shall also see all that is right. And whatever is right, and good, and true, and beautiful in this world has its origin not in the powers of the world but in the One who has ascended on high and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. By sin, we contribute to what is wrong with the world. By Christ’s grace he brings about all that is good. 

Hardly anyone in the world today will admit any of this. And as many search for solutions and remedies, as long as they do not recognize the cause and the depth of humanity’s woundedness and its own insufficiency in fashioning a cure, then they will only be grasping at air. Yet Christ did not want his grace to be reserved only for the few who ‘got it’. Quite to the contrary, he commissions us – you and me – to proclaim to the world that Christ alone is the King of the Universe, that Christ alone has the peace which the world does not and cannot give, that Christ alone is the answer to every question posed by the human heart, that Christ alone bestows on this world all that is good, and that Christ alone offers his grace to you, and to me, and to the whole world, to heal the world of its wounds through his wounds, holy and glorious. 

Let us, then, wounded as we are, call this world to look to the sky, to see our wounds and the wounds of all humanity hidden within in the One who has taken humanity to himself, to be with him and he with us now and for all eternity, where he lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.