The Ascension
Fruit of the Mystery: Hope
After giving his followers some last instructions, Jesus “was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19).
The Church defines “hope” as “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying . . . on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.”[i]
We often use the word “hope” in the course of our daily conversations. We hope for good weather. We hope to get a better job. We hope to find a spouse or to have a child. These are all good things, but that is not the type of hope that this fruit bears in our lives.
Instead, this is an existential hope. We desire what we are made for: to live in communion with God forever in heaven. It is a hope written on the soul of every person.
Sometimes, as the troubles of life weigh us down, we lose sight of that hope. It is hard to keep our eyes on the promise of the joys of eternal life when we feel buried by the sorrow of life here on earth.
Yet, perhaps those moments of struggle and suffering are the times in which we need this hope the most. The individual days of life can sometimes feel interminable, but when we look back over the passing years, they seem to have gone by in the blink of an eye. All things in this world are transient. In the light of eternity, even years of suffering are but a moment. Hope gives us the strength to endure and to trust in God’s promises of the glory of heaven.
One of the last things Jesus said to his followers was: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). That gospel, that good news, is the message that Christ came to save us, that eternal life is promised “to those who love him and do his will.”[ii] At its core, it is a message of profound hope that we can cling to as a liferaft on our darkest days.
In meditating on this mystery of The Ascension, may we pray to always hold on tightly to hope.
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