Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos

THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST GOD, THE RELAY RACE AND NELSON MANDELA

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“We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us […] If we get rid of our fear, our testimony will automatically free others "

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Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.

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PDF print format article
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The audio-reading of the article will be available this afternoon

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Dear brothers and sisters,

Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013 )

The solemnity of the Ascension is the return of Jesus to the Father who ascended to heaven, it brings with it all of humanity, and therefore all of us. On this solemnity the Lord opens wide the doors of Paradise to every man and we will reach him at the end of our life, if we welcome the grace of the Father and be his witnesses. So let's try to understand everything.

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In an athletics competition, specifically a four-hundred-meter relay race we find four athletes must reach the finish line. As they run, they pass a stick-shaped object called a baton. The first athlete thus begins the race, after a while’ of meters yields it to the second, who waits for him and starts running when he receives the witness, after other meters he gives it to the third, he also runs for a while’ and finally he gives it to the fourth runner who crosses the finish line with the baton.

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This example explains that Ascension it is the day when today there is the definitive handover between the mission of Jesus and that of the Apostles. And therefore also the passing of the baton among the Apostles, their Successors, the Successors of the Successors and finally us too, that we enter this transmission.

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In the Acts of the Apostles, at the beginning of his second work, the Evangelist Luke recalls the words of Jesus shortly before ascending to heaven:

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«You will receive the strength from the Holy Spirit who will descend on you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth " [At 1, 1-18]

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In Luke's testimony, we know that in the Ascension the Apostles received the Holy Spirit and the mandate to be witnesses to the ends of the earth, which in the world known to them indicated the territories of Israel and the entire Roman Empire. Therefore, the Holy Spirit will truly be that impetuous wind that will carry the sails of the Apostles to very distant territories from the small Jewish villages that they knew and inhabited.

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For us, too, following the example of the Apostles, the witness we are called to bear, from the Ascension onwards, it is an invitation to join a larger and more unexpected project. It is therefore to affirm the beauty of our faith in circumstances and places that we may not have loved thought of. When the Spirit accompanies us, it makes us discover new paths and roads of truth and beauty.

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The testimony of faith, then leads to generate, with God's help, of other believers like us. This nascent faith, Jesus teaches us according to the testimony of Mark, it has very specific signs:

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«These will be the signs that will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons, speak with new tongues, they will pick up snakes and, if they drink any deadly, it shall not hurt them harm; they will lay their hands on the sick and they will heal " [MC 16,15-20].

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Call on the name of the Lord it is the way in which the missionary work of the apostles is carried out: everything is done in the name of the Father, of the Son and the Holy Spirit. From this source, they flow like a cascade of miraculous signs and signs of God's healing for man. This is an encouragement for us: Jesus reassures us that the faith witnessed always gives good fruits of charity. We will not always work miracles strict sense, indeed plausibly almost never. Perhaps the only miracle we can truly do by cooperating with God, is to defeat the demons, the snakes and poisons of hatred and indifference generated by the materialism of today's post-modern society; this will be possible if united with the Lord we will bring his healing to all those who have neither material nor spiritual goods, abandoned by the world that deprives them is the nourishment for daily life, be the nourishment for eternal life, ie God.

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Nelson Mandela said in his inaugural address given in Pretoria in May of 1994 for his inauguration as president of South Africa:

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“We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us […] If we get rid of our fear, our testimony will automatically free others " [see WHO]

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We ask the Lord to be good witnesses and bearers of a message of eternal life, with the intercession of Mary our mother, and in this way to unite all men to the horizon of eternal life inaugurated in the Ascension.

Amen.

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Rome, 16 May 2021

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