"With One Accord"

 

Some of us here may be old enough (obviously, I am) to remember when the Easter Candle was ritually extinguished after the reading of the Gospel on Ascension Day. Even more dramatically, in certain places in earlier centuries, either the candle itself or a statue of the Risen Christ would be hoisted up to the church’s ceiling until it disappeared though an opening of the roof, often to be replaced by a shower of roses as a sign of Christ’s parting promise to give the Holy Spirit to the Church. Yet, the point of such rituals was less about Christ’s departure, as if he were now permanently absent, than about his new mode of presence in our life together as his Church. As the Church prays in the Preface of today’s Mass: he ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.

Some 20 or so years ago, the famous British biblical scholar and retired Church of England Bishop N.T. Wright, authored a book, The Last Word, in which he suggested we think of history as a play in five acts. The first act is creation; the second the fall and sin’s consequences for the human family; the third the story of God’s Chosen People from Abraham to Jesus; the fourth the fulfillment of God’s revelation to Israel in the story of Jesus (after whom, as Vatican II reminded us, we neither need, nor expect any further revelation). The final fifth act, the present, is the time of the Church. It presupposes all that preceded it, as we tell and retell the world the story of creation, sin, and salvation in Christ, while moving forward toward our final destiny.

Historically speaking, this fifth act – the time of the Church, our time – began when the disciples were all filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Before his ascension, the Risen Lord had told them to remain in Jerusalem to await the promised gift of the Holy Spirit. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that they devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, assembled in Jerusalem, under the leadership of the apostles, praying together with Mary, the Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church, during that interval, that in-between transitional time, which the Church’s calendar recalls during this novena of nine days between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday.

Thus, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost all go together. The first highlights Christ's actual resurrection; the second his glorification at the Father's right hand; the third his continued presence in his Church through the gift of the Holy Spirit. When "we clearly see and understand the divine action of the Holy Spirit in the successive steps of the history of the Church," wrote this first pastor of this parish, Isaac Hecker, in his great book The Church and the Age, "we should fully comprehend the law of all true progress."

Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, May 17, 2026.