Bishop Glen John Provost
Bishop of Lake Charles
Homily for the Feast of the Ascension
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

"When they saw him, they worshiped." Matthew 28:17

The topic that philosophers have perhaps written about the most is the topic that people today appear to understand least. It is a topic that everyone will claim they have experienced yet if asked to define it, words will fail them. It is a topic on the lips of many, but few grasp it. It is expressed in a simple word, but the word has multiple definitions that only add to the confusion. It can be an emotion, a feeling, a sentiment, a philosophical concept, but so many reduce it to the physical. So little understood, the concept has a spiritual dimension and that makes it least accessible to the modern secular world. Of course, the topic is love.

I am reminded of love because the Ascension is an act of love. The Trinity is rooted in love. Its dynamic principle, its essential adhesion, is love. The Son must return to the Father, and the Holy Spirit must come because of love. Jesus says, "When the Paraclete comes, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father-and whom I myself will send from the Father-he will bear witness on my behalf" (John 15:26). Jesus came to give witness to the love of the Trinity for mankind. That love is proven in the words that Jesus did. The chief work is His sacrificial death on the cross. Jesus is willing to die as an offering for our sins. In this Jesus proves God's immense and unfathomable love for the sinner.

To learn that lesson of love is to live in that love. "As the Father has loved me," Jesus says, "so I have loved you. Live on in my love. You will live in my love if you keep my commandments, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and live in his love" (John 15:9-10). True love has its origin in God. Man has a great capacity to love, but he must learn the lesson of love. For this God must become Man and show mankind how to love. Jesus does this by showing man how to live love. In this lesson is an invitation to an intimacy with God. "To them I have revealed your name," Jesus says in His prayer to the Father, "and I will continue to reveal it so that your love for me may live in them, and I may live in them" (John 17:26). The name of God is "love", and to know that name is an invitation in itself. "God is love," St. John will write, "and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (I John 4:16).

When Jesus returns to the Father in the Ascension, He brings His apostles up to a high mountain. There they fall down and worship Him. It is an act of love. As is so often the case, loving adoration becomes a moment of revelation. Jesus tells the apostles, "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:18-19). Jesus has revealed the love of the Trinity to the apostles. Now they are to go out and invite the world to the love of the Trinity.

In all this talk about love we have not once mentioned the physical. That is because love is essentially two things. Love is by nature sacrificial and spiritual. First, love has nothing to do with the self. Love's very nature is to give. Love is a gift of self. This insight into the sacrificial aspect of love inspires St. Paul to write, "Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, it is not snobbish. Love is never rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not prone to anger; neither does it brood over injuries. Love does not rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices with the truth. There is no limit to love's forbearance, to its trust, its power to endure. Love never fails" (I Corinthians 13:4-8). Love is never rooted in self. Love is gift, and in gift it is sacrificial.

To equate love with the sexual act is one of the great fallacies of the modern age. The physical expression of love is a beautiful creation of God that has a distinct goal. It is a gift from God designed for a specific purpose. However, to say that physical love is the defining moment of love's expression, much less the only way that love can be expressed, is to place a burden on the act that it cannot bear. Love endures, and in that endurance it reveals its spiritual nature. I am reminded of that magnificent passage from the Song of Songs. "Love is a fire no waters avail to quench, no floods to drown; for love, a man will give up all that he has in the world, and think nothing of his loss" (Song of Songs 8:7). The lover can persevere because love endures. Love moves the hero to give his life for a higher cause. Love strengthens the parent to give his or her all to the child. Love makes the missionary go to the ends of the earth for the message. Love creates martyrs, poets, and faithful servants. In all of this love demonstrates its spirituality.

There is one thing about which I am certain. A material world cannot understand the spirituality of love. A person for whom the physical is the only reality will never grasp the spiritual nature of love. Love is too powerful a spiritual and sacrificial force to be locked into the present or the physical moment. This Jesus taught by His very life and demonstrated by His Ascension to the Father.