Laudet Dominum

We live in a world filled with noise. How many of us constantly have the radio or TV on at home? We get into our cars, and there’s the radio. We walk outside and hear the noise of vehicles, trains, other people. We’re surrounded, even bombarded, with noise constantly. This noise prevents us from hearing the still, small voice of God speaking in our hearts.

Our Lord knew the importance of silence and solitude. After feeding the five thousand, which we heard last week, Jesus sent his disciples ahead of him in a boat so that he could have some time to pray in private. These times of prayer are what fueled Our Lord’s ministry, kept him going, regardless of the demands that were placed upon him. He also made prayer a priority before any major decision or event. This time, Our Lord used the opportunity for prayer to grieve over the death of his cousin, John the Baptist. Jesus knew that he could take all his concerns to the Father in prayer, and that he would receive the grace to continue in his earthly ministry.

We need to follow Our Lord’s example. We need to bring our concerns, our challenges, our sorrows to the Father in prayer. When we make a major decision, we need to precede it with time of prayer, asking the Father to lead and guide us so that we may do his will. When we have difficulties in our lives, problems that we feel we can’t overcome, we need to bring those to prayer as well, trusting that God will provide the grace to face these challenges.

In our noisy culture, however, it is extremely difficult to bring ourselves to prayer. Because of the constant noise in the world today, it is difficult to silence ourselves and prepare ourselves to be open to God and listen to His response. While it may be difficult to enter into silence, it is all the more important, as the first reading today shows.

When Elijah, long considered Israel’s greatest prophet, reached Mount Horeb, he sought to speak with God. I think when many of us picture God speaking, we imagine something like the movie “The Ten Commandments.” We imagine that God has a deep, booming voice that shakes the rocks and causes earthquakes. When speaking with Elijah, however, God doesn’t speak that way. He doesn’t speak in a great wind, or an earthquake, or even in fire, but in a tiny whispering sound.

This is how God the Father speaks to us today. He doesn’t yell at us, he doesn’t force us to hear him. Instead, he whispers to us. He speaks softly in our hearts, inviting us to enter into silence and prayer so that we can hear his voice. God does answer our prayers, he does speak to us, but he does it so softly that the noise of the world can easily drown it out.

This is why we must allow for periods of silence in our lives. Every day, we must take time to turn off the TV or radio, get away from the noise of the world and listen to God. We need to spend time in prayer, bringing the challenges of our lives, the struggles we’re facing, the sorrows and joys of daily life to God. We also need to spend time silently waiting for an answer. It may not come right away, and it may not even be during times of prayer, but we need to have the periods of silence to open our hearts to God, and prepare them to follow his will.

How do we find this time for silence? It’s often very difficult to do, but is so important for our spiritual well-being. One option is to schedule time during the day to spend in a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament. The church is always open throughout the day, so anyone can stop in and spend time before Our Lord in the Tabernacle. I realize that it is often impossible to actually spend an hour in adoration, but I wouldn’t be discouraged if you can’t do one hour. Even if you only can spend fifteen minutes in front of Our Lord in silent prayer, the graces that we receive from simply stopping by are immeasurable. Our Lord is here in the church, waiting for us to spend time with him. May we have the faith to spend time with Our Lord in silence.

When we look at the feeding of the five thousand, which we see in today’s Gospel, it’s easy to focus on the surface meaning of the miracle. Our Lord was able to feed five thousand men, plus women and children who were not counted in the five thousand, by multiplying five loaves and two fishes. This in itself would be an incredible event, but there is a far deeper message within Jesus’ actions: the deep and sustaining love of God for each of us.

All those who followed Jesus would have considered the gift of bread and fish in today’s miracle as a great gift indeed, but few, if any, realized the deeper gift that Our Lord was preparing for his disciples: the Eucharist. Even in his great sorrow over the death of his cousin, John the Baptist, Jesus was willing to give of himself to care for the those who followed Him. He knew the faith of those who followed him, and was able to work with that faith to feed them.

Much as Jesus fed the five thousand, Our Lord is also able to feed us through his gift of himself in the Eucharist. This is not merely a physical feeding, as he was able to do with the five thousand, but a spiritually fulfilling meal. Just as Jesus was able to take five loaves of bread and give them to everyone who was present, Our Lord is able to take simple bread and wine and change it into His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity at every Mass that is celebrated throughout the world. Instead of feeding just five thousand, He is able to give himself to all those who follow him throughout time and space.

Just as Our Lord willingly gave to those who followed him out of love, He gives Himself to us out of the same love. Even with his sorrow, Our Lord had compassion on those who followed him, and willingly healed the sick and fed the crowds out of His love. When we receive the Eucharist, we are also receiving the benefit of His love for us.

As Saint Paul tells us in the second reading, God loves us so much that nothing outside of us can separate us from him. Even when Our Lord was in need of solitude, he did not allow that desire to come between himself and His people, but he reached out in pity to those who had traveled far to follow Him. In the same way, Our Lord does not allow anything to come between us and Him, but is constantly reaching out to us in love, constantly sending us the grace to respond to His love and turn to him.

While we can never be separated from God’s love, we can still turn our back on Him. Instead of responding to God’s love with joy and our own love for Him, we can instead refuse His love and ignore him. God loves us so much that He is willing to allow us to refuse his love and ignore Him. In effect, the only way that we can separate ourselves from God is through our own actions. God will never abandon us, but He will allow us to abandon him.

So how do we respond to Our Lord in love? First and foremost, we need to realize that when we receive the Eucharist, we are receiving the greatest gift that Jesus can give us: himself. We need to approach the Eucharist with devotion, and receive it with true joy and a desire to unite ourselves with Him. We need to make sure that we’re receiving the Eucharist out of true love for Our Lord, and not merely because it’s what Catholics are expected to do when we come to Mass.

As St. Jose Maria Escrivá wrote, we must prepare to receive Our Lord as if it were the only time that we would be able to receive Him. I would venture to say that if we were only able to receive the Eucharist once in our lives, we would prepare for the event much like many people prepare for graduations, weddings, and baptisms. Very few people take these major events for granted, with good reason. In the same way, we should not take the Eucharist for granted.

When we receive the Eucharist, Our Lord reaches out to us in love and feeds us with himself. May we never turn away from Him, but always respond to His love.

When we recite the Creed at Mass, as we will in just a few moments, have you ever thought about the passage that states, “he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father”? Today, we are celebrating exactly that event in salvation history, the Ascension of Our Lord.

The feast of the Ascension is traditionally celebrated on the Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter, which happens to be forty days after Easter Sunday, but many diocese, the Archdiocese of Chicago included, have moved it back a couple more days to today, the Seventh Sunday of Easter. The traditional placement of the feast of the Ascension forty days from Easter is significant, as our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells us. Following his resurrection, Our Lord spent forty days with the Apostles teaching them and preparing them for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

The number forty frequently appears within the Scriptures whenever there is an event that is important within God’s plan of salvation. Examples would be the forty years the Israelites spent wandering in the desert, the forty days and forty nights that the Great Flood lasted, even the forty days Our Lord spent fasting in preparation for his ministry. All of these events were important periods of preparation for a key point in salvation history. The forty days before the Ascension is no less important. During this time, Our Lord was preparing the Apostles for the reception of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, as well as their mission to preach to the whole world, as St. Matthew records in his Gospel.

Getting back to the first reading, we hear that Jesus ascended into heaven on the fortieth day, disappearing behind a cloud. What’s the significance of the cloud? Did he just happen to pass through a random cloud as he ascended? Not quite. As I’ve mentioned in previous homilies, there is symbolism throughout the Scriptures. The cloud is more than just a convenient way for Jesus to disappear as he ascends, but is actually a symbol of Heaven itself. By disappearing into the cloud, Jesus is shown to already be in Heaven, seated at the right hand of God. In fact, throughout the Scriptures, clouds are present whenever God manifests himself, such as the Father speaking through the clouds at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River or again at the Transfiguration.

When Our Lord ascended into Heaven, he completed his saving work on Earth, opening the gates of Heaven to us who follow him. Not only does this event lift our hearts to God, as the priest exhorts us to do at every Mass, but it finishes the work that Jesus began in his passion and continued through his death and resurrection. The Ascension of Our Lord opens the gates of Heaven to allow us to enter, while also allowing God’s grace to flow through us by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon all who believe.

As believers, we all want to be recipients of that grace, and we definitely want to follow Our Lord through the gates of Heaven and receive our eternal reward. How do we do this? In order to receive these gifts from our Heavenly Father, we must prepare ourselves much as the Apostles were prepared throughout the forty days that they spent with Jesus following his resurrection. Now, many of us can’t leave work, family, and other obligations to spend forty days totally immersed in prayer and reflection, but we have the tools available to prepare throughout our lives. Most importantly, we have the sacraments, especially Reconciliation and the Eucharist, which provide the graces that we need to overcome our sinful nature and to bring us closer to God. We also have devotions, such as the Rosary, which can aid us in developing a regular pattern of prayer. In addition, we can spend time in study and reflection over the Scriptures, allowing us to be immersed in God’s word. Many more tools are available; these are just a small sampling of the wide variety available to us.

As we celebrate this feast of the Ascension, may we imitate the Apostles in preparation, and one day follow Our Lord into Heaven after our time on Earth is finished.