Ascentsion Thursday and the Gift of the Holy Spirit

Forty days after His Resurrection, Our Lord ascends into Heaven. Today we celebrate the Ascension. This year, I noticed that, despite all His preaching, all His parables, all His miracles, despite His Resurrection from the dead, His disciples still did not understand the truth about the Kingdom of God.

To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, "you hear from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 1: 3-5)

We all know that ten days after His Ascension, this is exactly what happened on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit descended on them and opened their hearts and minds to the Truth. And thanks be to God that He, the Holy Spirit, did this. For as they had gathered to witness His Ascension, we read in Acts 1:6

So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"

It looks like they still were stuck on the idea of a kingdom that was hardly different than what most Jews at that time envisioned. Even the great parable of the sower, a parable which Jesus then explained privately in great detail to his Apostles, apparently did not really sink in. (If you don't remember it, go to Mark 4: 1-20.) Here's what the average Jew understood about the kingdom and the parable of the sower, as explained by Guiseppe Ricciotti, in The Life of Christ:

The average Jew who was expecting a political-messianic kingdom would not have understood the true meaning of this parable. For the average Jew was expecting a resplendent conqueror-king, and here the founding of the kingdom is not even mentioned. He was expecting the kingdom, fully established and ready for him, to descend from the clouds of heaven midst the rumble and crash of awesome portents, and here the kingdom was presented as rising silently from the earth midst obstacles of every kind. He was awaiting the vindication of his nation and victory over the pagans and here instead mention is made only of the hidden formation of the spirit, of victory over the passions and mundane interest. The average Jew, therefore, could see and could not see through the parable. The more tenaciously attached he was to his old concepts and beliefs, the more dense would be his heart and the deafer his ears, and he would reject the complete "change of mind" to which the parable cautiously invited him.

But the kingdom of heaven finds obstacles to its realization even where it has been well received...

And so we find the faithful disciples of Our Lord, to whom He showed Himself after His Resurrection, they to whom He patiently explained the real meaning of the Kingdom of God, still stuck in their old notions.

We in business can understand how being stuck in old notions holds us back. Businesses and whole industries have failed as a result of not understanding and adjusting to a changing world. In understanding and adjusting to a changing world, we recognize the world as it is now. We need to understand the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Our Lord has presented here the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven, as its really exists, not as the average Jew or even his own disciples might wish it to be. We'll see next time that it took the power of the Holy Spirit for them to finally understand. And we'll see how this great gift of the Holy Spirit helps us not merely to understand the truths of our Faith, but everything, everywhere, all the time - yes, even at work.