Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
This Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord, we have an image of Jesus ascending into heaven,
and we may think that the whole feast is wrapped up in Jesus going to heaven in his human body,
but it's not that at all.
It's the fact that we, too, will one day ascend into heaven.
Of course, Jesus is always in heaven. He's God.
He was always with the Father, although not with his humanity until the Ascension.
But the main message here is that we, too,
will ascend to heaven if we are united to our Lord in obeying his commandments
and living in Jesus in the Eucharist and in his grace.
So our focus is on heaven.
That has to be our focus day in and day out to the end of our life.
We can never lose our focus on heaven, and it's easy to do.
It's easy to lose your focus.
All you have to do is open your eyes and see this world and get all caught up in it.
And, you know, keep your head down.
Keep your eyes on the glitter of this world and the pleasures and the entertainments and the music
and all the distractions of this world.
Focus on that. Focus on it long enough, and you can take your focus off of heaven
and our true homeland where the entertainments and joys and happiness and pleasures
are beyond anything that this world could even approach.
And that's the promise that we have, and that's what we should be living for.
And we wouldn't be foolish not to live for that.
We're foolish not to live for that.
If we live for this world, you know, we can see all the disappointments,
all the temporary joys and all the sadness.
All the crosses that aren't avoidable.
If we live for this world and forfeit the next, we are truly foolish.
But the wise keep their eyes on heaven and live for heaven.
And we can lose our faith in that.
We can lose our faith in the promises that Jesus gives us
by not staying united to our Lord in prayer and the sacraments and confession
and not nourishing our faith.
We can fall away from the faith and not even believe in heaven
and even think that living for this world is worth it.
You know, the song of the Beatles,
imagine there's no heaven and no hell below us.
What a bliss life would be, you know.
If you were the Beatles and you had millions of dollars,
maybe you might think that this world was worth something.
You can have the pleasures, you know, that they had.
Most people don't have millions of dollars
and can hide the counterfeit pleasures and joys of this world
that they managed to do for some time anyway.
But most of us see that this world is full of crosses and sadness unavoidable.
And it would be foolish indeed to stake our hopes on this world.
But we can do it.
We can do it.
We can do it.
We can do it.
We have the hope of eternal life.
We have the hope of heaven.
And it's up to us to nourish that hope on the virtue of hope,
which is thinking of our Lord,
thinking of the promises that he gave to us,
using our common sense.
Really, it is common sense to realize that this world is not worth living for
and that there is a reward for the good that we do in this life
because there are so many injustices in this world
that we can't live for.
There will never be righted perfectly.
It is only right to expect that justice will be in the next life
and that this is the promise.
But the promise that our Lord gives us is beyond our imagination,
beyond anything we can think of.
And it's something that would excite the saints just to mention the heaven,
mention Our Lady, give them an image of Jesus or an image of Our Lady
and they go into ecstasy and long and hope and yearn for the day
when they will be united to our Lord in heaven.
And that can be me and you too.
All we have to do is continue to reflect on heaven, keep praying,
keep meditating on the mysteries, the glorious mysteries of eternal life
and meditating on the promises that our Lord gives us,
meditating on God himself who is heaven.
He will be our heaven.
Thinking about the perfect, the perfection of God,
the infinite perfection of God, the infinite power of God
and taking the joys of this heaven as like sort of a tiny taste
of what heaven would be like.
You know, we all have had joys in this life and we can think, you know,
at least get a little tiny taste of heaven,
and the greatest pleasure we can have or joy in this life
is a tiny, tiny taste of eternal life.
And we can...
We can use that anyway to nourish that virtue of hope
and to keep praying, keep praying, keep our mind focused on eternal life
and keep doing everything for heaven,
keep doing everything to, so to speak, earn heaven
by practicing the commandments of God
and receiving our Lord in the Eucharist
and staying united to our Lady and praying to the Rosary
and asking our Lady to continue to nourish this hope in us
and make it stronger and stronger
and to realize that the hope of heaven really sustains us in this life.
People think that if we are religious and we hope for heaven
then we're not going to be good citizens of this world.
We're not going to be good people of this world.
Our mind is going to be in the clouds and we're going to be...
you know, just staying in our room all our life
and doing nothing for the benefit of this world.
And, of course, that's totally false.
Look at all the good that Mother Teresa and her orders have done.
Look at the good of the religious orders.
Look at the good of all the Christians.
When we live for heaven, we live to make other people happy.
We live to be at peace, to forgive, to give, to make other people happy,
to bring them...
to bring them out of their sorrows.
The hope for heaven allows us to do that.
The hope for the pleasures of this world makes us selfish, self-focused,
forget about other people,
and indulge in my own pleasures because I only live once.
I only live for this world.
And it makes us only selfish.
But the hope for heaven, eternal life,
the acknowledgement of...
that God is present and observing all that we do,
this is what makes us live a good, full, true, hopeful life,
a full life, a life of joy, a life of hope,
in the midst of our sorrows.
And it allows us to carry our crosses with hope and joy.
So let us nourish that virtue of hope,
especially on this day,
and ask that from the generous...
heart of Our Lady.
© transcript Emily Beynon
Transcription by CastingWords