"What if you should see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?" (John 6:62)
In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus responds to disbelief in his teaching on the Eucharist by reference to his coming Ascension.
At one level, the miracle of the Ascension, like all his miracles, will prove his divinity and thereby validate all his teaching. But more specifically, it helps explain how and why he gives us the Eucharist.
If his body can rise beyond our world, then it can also appear on earth under a different guise. The Ascension will show how Jesus can bend the rules of created reality in regard to his body: if he can go up to heaven, he can also return to earth under the appearance of bread and wine.
In addition to the "how", the Ascension shows why Jesus remains among us in the Blessed Sacrament: he wants to be close to us physically.
Our bodies are an essential part of who we are, and so Jesus wants to be bodily near us after he ascends. His reply to Mary Magdalen’s attempt to embrace him refers explicitly to his Ascension – "Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father" (John 20:17) – and implicitly to the Eucharist, which will let him reach down from heaven to embrace her.
But knowing the "how" and "why" of his teaching is not enough to accept it: we need the gift of the Father (6:65) and the life-giving Spirit (6:63) in order to believe the Son.
Jesus chose his twelve apostles and gave them the grace to believe in him but he wanted them to be free in their response. He respects our freedom so much that he tolerated Judas as an apostle, even though he miraculously knew of his future betrayal (6:64,71).
And Jesus does not want our free response to be merely exterior. When the disciples started to abandon him for his Eucharistic teaching, he did not plead with the apostles to stay, as we might be tempted to do in such a situation.
Instead of a plea, he asked them a question about their desire: "What about you, do you want to go away too?" (6:67). He was more interested in the interior response of his followers than maintaining their numbers.
Peter’s reply is exemplary: "Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God" (6:68-69).
He does not understand yet how Jesus’ teaching can be true, but he trusts Jesus as a person because of their friendship.
If we want to understand Jesus’s words, we have to trust him first.<br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-conundrum-of-having-to-chew-jesus/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">The conundrum of having to ‘chew’ Jesus</mark></a></strong>
<em>Photo: 'The Ascension' by Pieter Verhaghen. (Wikimedia.)</em>
