In my part of the country, we celebrate Ascension Thursday on its proper day which means that our Sunday Gospel for the seventh Sunday in Easter looks a bit different than most of the rest of the country. With that being said, the focus of the week leading up to Pentecost is the same universally in the Church: Jesus is going to heaven so that He can send us the Holy Spirit.
In the Gospel reading that will be heard in ecclesial provinces of Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Omaha, and Philadelphia, Jesus is praying to the Father at the Last Supper. On the night before He died, Jesus gives glory to God and asks the Father to assist the Apostles because Jesus is going back to the Father.
We know the end of the story. Jesus is betrayed, arrested, condemned, and brutally murdered. But death could not hold him. Jesus resurrects on Sunday morning and eventually ascends into Heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father. Here, Jesus intercedes for all of us who are His own.
An interesting reflection point for this Gospel is that Jesus is an intercessor. We tend to think of Him as a miracle worker so He does not seem like someone who asks for help. But if we look closer, those miracles were the product of Jesus’ relationship with the Father and His trust in Him. We could say that each miracle that Jesus performs is a form of intercession between a broken humanity and the Father. So it is natural that in both this gospel and the Ascension Jesus is appealing to the Father on our behalf.
In a certain sense, intercession to the Father was Jesus’ whole mission. Because we were lost in our sin, He finds us, redeems us, and asks the Father for our aid. This is all done at the desire of the Father whose Word shall do what pleases Him, achieving the end for which He sent it. And because Jesus takes on human form, we now have an intercessor who can sympathize with our weakness.
Having an intercessor means that we are meant to join into Jesus’ saving mission. If God is giving us gifts at Jesus’ request, we are meant to use them. So while during this Easter season we celebrate Jesus as the one who conquered death, we are not meant to watch from the sidelines. Jesus comes so that He can give us an example and facilitates heavenly aid so that we can enter into Jesus’ life and become intercessors for our brothers and sisters.
So the call for us continues to be the same, regardless of the liturgical season. We are to humbly receive the graces that God grants us which help us follow Jesus to the cross. If we do this, we will rise with Him and ultimately ascend into heaven where we can enter into His saving work of intercession with the angels and saints who have gone before us. May Jesus always intercede for us to have the strength to do so.