Ascension Thursday With St. Teresa of Avila

Happy Feast of the Ascension!

Even if your Diocese has moved Ascension Thursday to this coming Sunday, it's still the Feast of the Ascension today, isn't it? After all, for centuries we called this day "Ascension Thursday," not Ascension-Thursday-that-we-decided-to-move-to-Sunday. 

Our Diocese may have its issues, but at least it never has made the move. So here it's Ascension Thursday - just as it has been for centuries past.

At work, it'll be a more or less typical day. Perhaps in the past, during the days when Christianity was alive and well, when the idea of a completely separate "secular" world was inconceivable, there was a respite from work and a festive celebration of this great day. But not here and now. Now we're in that artificially bifurcated world that functions as if the supernatural either doesn't exist or that it somehow has no place in the natural secular order that rules our days - at least our work days.

So work goes on, more or less, as it always does. But how about we lean on the "less" for just this one special day. Somehow, some way, we can make this day special as it should be. 

Perhaps we recollect ourselves more often throughout the day - always a challenge, of course. But if we ask God for the grace to do so, don't you think He will provide it? And, as is always the case with grace, if He provides, then it's up to us to cooperate. 

Maybe you've got your own plan to make the Feast of the Ascension something special.

At the very least, we can open our minds and hearts to the Risen Lord Who, on this day, returned to the Father, after His life on earth. At the very least, we can use our imagination and picture Him ascending, as His Apostles and His Mother watched Him leave. And we can, in our recollection, know that He has really never "left" us at all. He is always with us. And most especially us, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Holy Eucharist. Even more, we can, if we are in the state of grace, receive Him in Holy Communion, uniting ourselves with Him in a way that is, well, who can really describe how awesome and astounding this is?!!

Whatever it takes, do "connect" in some way with the glorious feast day.

And as we mark the last days of our Easter Season, we connect with our recent thoughts about days at work that are most difficult, especially when super-busyness kicks things up a notch. Last time we saw how great St. Teresa of Avila suffered through her life, yet persisted in her work, giving glory to God day by day in spite of it. We noted her physical suffering. But, as we know, spiritual suffering can be as great if not greater. Here are her words describing her spiritual suffering, along with her response to it. We can derive much from this.

“Alone as I was, without a single friend to give me a word of encouragement, I could neither pray nor read, but there I remained, for hours and hours together, uneasy in mind and afflicted in spirit, on account of the weight of my trouble, and of the fear that perhaps after all I was being tricked by the devil, and wondering what in the world I could do for my relief. Not a gleam of hope seemed to shine upon me from either earth or heaven; except just this, that in the midst of all my fears and dangers I never forgot how our Lord must be seeing the weight of all I endured.

O my Lord Jesus Christ! What a true friend You are, and how powerful! For when You wish to be with us You can be, and You always do wish it if only we will receive You. May everything created, O Lord of all the world, praise You and bless You! If only I could tramp the whole world over, proclaiming everywhere with all the strength that is in me what a faithful friend You are to those who will be friends with You! My dear Lord, all else fails and passes away; You, the Lord of them all, never fail, never pass away. What You allow those who love You to suffer is all too little. O my Lord, how kindly, how nobly, how tenderly, how sweetly, You succeed in handling and making sure of Your own! Oh, if only one could secure that one would love nothing but You alone! You seem, my dear Lord, to put to the trial with rods and agonies one who loves You, only that, just when You have brought her to the last extreme of endurance, she may understand all the more the boundless limits of Your love.” (St. Teresa of Avila)
  

Happy Feast of the Ascension!

Special P.S:

Tomorrow marks the 1st day of the Novena to Holy Spirit which we Catholics have prayed for centuries in preparation for Pentecost (coming up next Sunday). You can find it by doing a simple internet search.