Ascension & First Communion Sunday 2005

To appreciate the greatness of the Ascension of our Lord into heaven, we have to take some steps back in time and imagine the population of heaven during the time when our Lord walked on this earth. If you think of the scenes of heaven that are familiar to us from the pictures of many artists, you see that God the Blessed Trinity has the central place. Around His throne are thousands of holy angles arranged in ranks who are playing instruments and singing the praises of God. This picture is true and it has always been like this since the time that the good angels were in heaven. But there is something missing in this picture: there are still no human beings at that time. The familiar scene with men and women saints with their golden crowns and colorful robes is incomplete. Before the time of Jesus there was not a single human person present in heaven. Its gates were closed to humanity since the fall of our first parents. After they died, good men could only go down to limbo, a place of waiting. This situation, this ‘incomplete heaven’ was changed on the day when our Lord Jesus made His glorious Ascension into heaven.

Now, you have to remember this: the Son of God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity was always in heaven with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, the One God. But, the physical Body of Jesus was not there until He ascended into heaven. We can only try to picture in our minds what a happy reception ceremony there was in heaven at the moment Jesus entered in. There, for the first time, was a human nature that had never before populated heaven. For us, this means that ‘one of our own,’–a man–was now with God! (Of course, we know that Jesus is more than just a man and that He is God. But the point is that because of Him, humanity had its first time to be in heaven.)

Although we are proud that Jesus became the first man to enter heaven and is now seated at the right hand of God the Father, are we not also sad because we cannot see Him anymore on earth? Where has His visibility gone? Pope Saint Leo the Great answered this when he said that our Lord’s visible presence has now passed / into the sacraments. In Holy Communion, Jesus is still with us and, in a way, He is now even closer to us that He was to most people in His times. And this is because His blest Body, His holy Soul, and His infinite ‘God-ness’ come to us by receiving Holy Communion.

We Catholics then have a double boast, a double reason to be joyful. Not only are some of our human people in heaven (now there are lots of saints there with Jesus), but also our Lord is really present in His Body and Blood, His Soul and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist.

Therefore, when we come to receive Holy Communion, we must come with very much love for Jesus and only take Holy Communion if we do not have mortal sins on our souls. These two things, love and purity are necessary to receive Holy Communion. Our children who are making their First Holy Communion today have already made their first confession and they have been told to receive Jesus with great love. Adults too must not forget these first lessons: they remain true for all time. No one should ever spoil the most beautiful Gift of God that we have by receiving Jesus in sin or without love.

We already put a crown on the statute of our Blessed Mother, the Mother of Jesus. Let us ask Her to help us to make good Holy Communions all our life so that we can become holy people and go to heaven some day.