In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Not a few people have said to me in the course of time that this is a rather sad feast-day because today the Lord ascends to heaven, and is taken away from us, as it were. We stop singing “Christ is risen”, and everything changes. On the other hand, the Saviour, Himself, said that all this has to be because something more important has yet to come for us. The gift of the Holy Spirit has to come. Unless He would ascend into heaven, the gift of the Holy Spirit was not going to come, as the Lord said. So it was absolutely necessary that He ascend into heaven today, as He did.

We learn today that just before the Ascension into heaven, after forty days of His being with them, telling them WHO HE IS, and what He is doing, reminding them about everything, the Apostles still said to the Lord: “Will You at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?” They, like all sorts of us, were slow to understand. We see it, and we will see it with the readings in these few days about the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and how the Apostle Peter behaved, and how much he was changed with the coming of the Holy Spirit.

The Apostle Peter was an older man already when he encountered Christ. After twenty-five, people are already very set in their ways as everyone knows. Therefore the Apostle took a long time to catch on to things. He is not so different from the rest of us, and we are not so different from him. We are slow to catch on to what is going on with the Lord. The love of the Lord is so great; the love of the Lord is so all-encompassing; the love of the Lord is so deep that it is beyond us. We can’t even begin really to grasp the immensity of the Lord’s love. I have said many times (and other people have said it too) that if I were God, this earth would have been wiped out, and fried a long time ago because we don’t have anything like the love, and the patience that He has. Why has the world not come to an end long ago with all the evil that is rampant upon the earth? It is because the Lord in His mercy, the Lord who is the Lover of us all, the Lord who created us all, the Lord who continues to love us into our existence, and through our existence, this same Lord is patient in His love. He is still waiting for all of us so that we have the maximum opportunity to turn to the light, to turn away from the darkness before such a consummation of all things will occur.

When you hear so many people talking about the end of the world on television, radio, and so forth, they are talking like this exactly because they don’t have the patience of the Lord. They speculate that because things are so horrible, things must be coming to an end now. However, the Lord has said over and over that “of that day, and hour no one knows, but the Father only” (cf. Matthew 24:36). It is our business, in the middle of all this difficulty, all these trials, and tribulations, to be persevering in love, in living out the love of Jesus Christ in the way that He showed us in the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Without the Grace of the Holy Spirit, who could survive? That’s why it was important for the Lord to ascend into the heavens today, so that He would send the Holy Spirit upon us, and enable us to live our lives through all of the difficulties.

It is important to remember, too, that if it were not for the Grace of the Holy Spirit pouring out upon the Church (I’m sorry I am jumping ahead in terms of feast-days, but still everything is connected), how do you think all the martyrs from the time of the beginning would have known how to be faithful as they did? Take those seventy plus years of Soviet domination of the former imperial territory, the former Soviet Union. Can you imagine how the people lived, and endured through all those years, all of the godlessness, and all of that slaughter? How could they manage to live through all of that, and survive, and still be Christians (and that there still be a Church) if the Holy Spirit were not poured out on them, and if the Holy Spirit did not sustain them? We think we have it so difficult here one way or another. What we are living (no matter what our difficulties are) is just “a piece of cake”, and “a walk in the park” compared to what people had to suffer in those territories for seventy years, and what other people elsewhere had to suffer, too, over the course of the past two thousand years. The greatest, the gravest, has been in this last century – it is true. It was awful. But still, no matter how hard the devil tried to put out the light, he never succeeded, and he never will.

It’s important for you, and for me, in seeing the Lord ascend into heaven today as we stand with the Apostles, and the Mother of God on the Mount of Olives, and He is taken from our sight, to rejoice in the coming of the Holy Spirit to strengthen us. He does already strengthen us because we are already living in the Grace of the Holy Spirit. It’s important for us to take strength from the Lord, and confidence in His promises that He is going to be with us all the time. He said: “I am with you always” (cf. Matthew 28:20), and He is with us always. It is really important for us to remember the promise of the Lord every day of our lives when the Tempter is trying to drag us away. The promises of the Lord are always constant, and always faithful (unlike us, who always end up breaking promises). The promises of the Lord are always faithful, and they are always fulfilled. The Grace of the Holy Spirit does come to us, and enables us to live our lives with joy, with confidence, and with power.

Today, with the Apostles, we are looking up, and seeing the Saviour part from us. Let us follow the example of the Apostles, and be in the temple constantly praising the Lord, because this is what we were created to do. Before everything else, we were created to praise God. It is important for us to make certain that all of our lives are characterised by this praising God, glorifying Him for everything. I want to remind you who are particularly of Ukrainian origin, that your language, even more than most, has all these daily reminders somehow built into it about glorifying God. For instance, there is this western Ukrainian custom of always saying: “Glory be to Jesus Christ” before you ever talk to each other. You always put Christ between yourselves before you begin the conversation. If someone says “thank-you” to you, then you say: “To the glory of God”. Everything is referred to Jesus Christ. Everything is offered to God. Everything is referred to Him. Those are just a couple of expressions.

There are many more similar expressions in the Ukrainian language in particular, and in Russian too. These languages have been baptised by the Grace of the Holy Spirit over the past thousand or more years. These languages, and the way of life, bring into everything the presence of Jesus Christ, the glorification of God in everything. Let’s get busy, and make certain that we translate these customs into our Canadian English way because the Canadian English polite way in which you never say anything about anything (always being so silent) tends to help us to be forgetful. It’s important for us to avoid those temptations in Canada, and to translate these important expressions into English, and to use them. We also need to be reminded that everything has to refer to God. Everything that we are, and do, and all our relationships have to have Jesus Christ in the middle of them.

The Lord ascended in glory granting joy to His Apostles. He gives joy to you, and me. Even though another Paschal season has come to an end, the joy of the Resurrection never does end. The living out of the Resurrection never does end. The fulfillment of the love of God never ends. Let us ask the same loving Lord to give us the Grace, and the strength to persevere in His love, remembering to trust Him in everything, no matter what difficulties we face. As He said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (cf. Matthew 28:20). To Him be glory, together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, now, and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America