Game Day!

I live in a diocese where the Ascension is moved to the Sunday following the actual day, so our Mass Readings today are for the Ascension.

These Readings completely melded for me. In the First Reading (Acts 1:1-11) you have Jesus ascending and the 2 angels telling the apostles to stop standing around. I can’t tell you the countless times my tennis instructor, elementary basketball coach, and even my band director told me to stop standing around. My mom used to tell us to stop sitting around like a bump on a log. Jesus made it perfectly clear what they were supposed to do, what He had prepared them to do. They had rigorously trained for this moment in their lives, yet they just stood there staring at the sky. I’m sure it was in utter disbelief. Can you ever truly be completely prepared for something like that?

The 2^nd Reading (Eph 4: 1-13) urges us to take the gifts God has given us and use them for His glory. The apostles were given different gifts: they didn’t all have the same ones. Think about your family. I know in mine, I was amazed at how each of my 9 siblings had different gifts to use when my father was in the last year of his life and needed us. We all aren’t caregivers; we all aren’t good with financial matters; we all aren’t called to make meals, and we all don’t know about insurance matters yet we all came together and together made a complete team. It was the same for the apostles: they each used their gifts and as a team came together to proclaim the Word & save. St. Paul urges us to take our gift & use it “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity through spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:1-3); basically to use our gifts for His glory. We shouldn’t be boastful or proud of our gifts. (I always think of the Blessed Virgin when I think about this: she didn’t go around saying, “You know Jesus? He’s my son. He performs miracles…what does your kid do?”) We should take our individual gifts, stop standing around, and get busy.

The Gospel (Mark 16:15-20) is a kind of prequel to the First Reading. Jesus tells the apostles to go out and save. He kept His promise to them by staying with them in the Holy Spirit. He gave them individual gifts and sent them to specific places so that we might be saved. He still does that today with each of us. He’s asking us to take our gifts and use them. He became man so that we might realize that we have these gifts. We aren’t supposed to keep them to ourselves; we are to go out into the world and share them for HIM.

Which brings us to full circle with the angels saying “Why are you standing there looking at the sky?” Or in other words: He told you this would happen. He prepared you for this. Now it’s Game Day!