What Is the Spirit Calling You to Do? - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, today is the great solemnity of the ascension of the Lord. It's a very important feast. Now, it's situated in between the resurrection of Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit. So, in between Easter and Pentecost, there's this feast of the ascension. Now, how do we begin to understand it? Well, think about this, that after the resurrection, Jesus exists on a kind of event horizon. I mean, he's straddling two dimensions. So sometimes the risen Christ appears seems very much like an ordinary figure within our world. Touch me. I'm not a ghost, you know, flesh and bones. And do you have something here to eat? And he ate in their presence. Other times, he seems to belong to another dimension. He suddenly appears and suddenly disappears.

0:55 And despite locked doors, he's suddenly in their midst. And he walks with two of them, but they don't recognize him until the breaking of the bread. And then suddenly they do. They worshiped, we hear, and some doubted. Well, see, what's happening in these strange descriptions? I think they're trying to hint at this unique experience of Jesus risen from the dead is, yes, in this world still, but no longer completely of this world. On that horizon between this dimension and that transcendent dimension that we call heaven. So what's the ascension? I put it this way. It's when this straddling existence comes to an end, and Jesus definitively moves into the higher dimension.

1:51 So, we no longer have experiences like the disciples had of the risen Lord. Now we experience him through his Holy Spirit, which he sends us from heaven, right? So, now think about that term for a minute. We say Jesus ascended into heaven. The Bible is using richly symbolic language now to hint at this strange reality that he's left behind this ordinary dimension of space and time and gone to a higher one. The ascension does not mean that Jesus has gone somewhere else within this dimensional system. So, if we say, you know, he went up into the sky, a cloud took him from their sight, etc., well, think of those as symbols of the transition into a higher pitch and plane of existence. We don't mean, that he's somewhere else in the solar system or he's out there in outer space somewhere.

2:49 No, that would just mean he's somewhere else within our dimensional system. The ascended Christ is not so much somewhere else. He's somehow else. Now, as I've said to you before, dimension language, I think is helpful. I think it's illuminating. You look at a square, which exists in two dimensions, raise that square to three dimensions, introduce a third dimension, and you get a cube. The square doesn't disappear. In fact, the cube includes the square, right? In fact, an infinity of squares can fit inside of a cube. A circle in two dimensions now raise it to a sphere to three dimensions. How many circles are in that sphere? Well, an infinite number of circles can fit in that sphere. The triangle becomes a pyramid now in three dimensions.

3:45 My point is, the higher dimension doesn't destroy the lower dimension. Rather, it includes it and raises it up. Huh. I think that names now what we mean when we say Jesus, heaven, God's realm, is a higher dimensional system. Does it mean that he's no longer related to us? Well, see, it would mean that if he's ascended out there past the planet Jupiter or he's in some other solar system. Well, yeah, then he's up there a long way away. But if he's been translated into a higher dimensional system, he can now impinge upon all of us. Christ, who roamed the hills of Galilee, well, yeah, he was able to relate to a pretty small group of people, just as I am. I can relate only to those who are right in front of me.

4:42 But the ascended Christ, the ascended Christ, can now be the Lord of all of space and all of time. Ah, now Jesus directing the work of his church. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I see now how that can work. If he had not ascended and sent the Spirit, he couldn't be governing the church the way that he does. now just before the ascension what do the disciples say to him it's interesting they say lord are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to israel well all right from the beginning of his public life jesus talked about the kingdom of god the coming of the kingdom the kingdom that he himself embodied so you know fair enough question now that you're risen from the dead is this the moment. What does he say? It's not for you to know the times or seasons, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.

5:44 The kingdom. Jesus famously prays, right? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven. What's the kingdom? It's the definitive coming together of heaven and earth. When God's way of being is now fully instantiated here, when this world is drawn up into the higher dimension. That's the kingdom of God. All right, when will that definitively come? That's not for you to worry about, and not for them to worry about, and not for us to worry about. Rather, what? wait here he says in Jerusalem and you will be equipped you will be empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue my work in other words don't worry so much about when this will definitively happen when all of time and space and history is consummated don't worry about that that's up to God what you worry about is receiving the Holy Spirit and now cooperating with that spirit to do the work of the Lord in the world.

6:52 That message, everybody, it's true for them. It's true for us. It's so important. When will the kingdom come? Look, I don't know definitively, but I do know I've got a task to help build up that kingdom. I got something that I can do, equipped by the Holy Spirit, to make that kingdom more of a reality. And that's what I should be worried about. You know, that's a way, everybody, to read the lives of all the saints. up and down the ages. They're so different, the saints. Different backgrounds, experiences, different styles of life, different personalities, all that. But what they have in common, they all discerned, huh, this is what the Holy Spirit wants me to do right now. Oh, when will it come definitively? Don't worry about that. You, like Francis, rebuild my church. He says to Francis, okay, I'll get on it.

7:47 Thomas Aquinas, I want you to think through the mystery of the faith. I want you to write your great works. Okay, I'm on it. And so you, right now, the Holy Spirit's got something for you to do. Discern what that is, and then get going. You know, here's something else I think interesting. I certainly hold to what I said, that the ascended Jesus is not, you know, up, up, and away and gone somewhere. No, no, he's governing his church from this higher dimension. But there is truth to this, that in a way, his ascension opens up a space for us. You know, if the risen Christ were simply, there he is, and well, I guess he should just take care of all this. No, in a way, his ascension opens up room for us to act. See, there's the space of the church, which is filled with the spirit of the ascended Christ. Yes, indeed. But it now becomes space that we can inhabit.

8:44 it. Good. That's appropriate. Don't you love this, too, in this account where he ascends to heaven and the disciples looking up, looking up, craning their necks, gazing up to heaven, and the two angels appear. Men of Galilee, why are you looking up into the sky? Allow yourself to hear that same message. See, the implication is, all right, you guys, get to work. Get to work. Don't waste your time wondering, okay, when exactly will he come back and when exactly will it all be fulfilled? No, no, don't worry about that. Get to work. Now go, go. You got work to do. Build up the kingdom. All right, so that's the first reading, Acts of the Apostles. Now listen how Paul, in that great letter to the Ephesians. By the way, get out your Bible at some point and just do it in one sitting.

9:39 Read the letter to the Ephesians, one of the most magnificent and cosmically rich texts in the New Testament. But he's making now the exact same point. He reminds his audience that God has raised Jesus from death, and then he says this, he's seated him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion. What are those, by the way, authorities, powers, dominions, well, they're angelic ranks. So, Paul's envisioning this spiritual realm of creation. We say God made the visible and also the invisible. Okay, well, Jesus ascended into this higher dimensional system is now seated. Again, don't think of a chair on the planet Jupiter. That's just Jesus in some other place. This is Jesus somehow else. what what does the session mean the seating of jesus it means he's in the place of power he's the plenipotentiary of the father he's the one given full authority to reign and to rule that's why you know in the creed we talk about and he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father that's not incidental next time you recite the creed think about that little line. He ascended into heaven and is seated. That's the sesio, the session of Jesus, because now he's in the attitude of kingship, and he's giving order and direction to his church so that we don't just look up waiting for him to come back. No, he's now giving us direction and sending us the Holy Spirit and telling us, come on, get to work. You do this, you do that.

11:23 And through his church, he's coordinating all this. That's what the being seated at the right hand of the Father means. And again, how does he govern? I'm staying now with Paul to the Ephesians. He put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body. The magnificence of that imagery. So, I've been talking about Christ as governor and then he's ordering us. True enough. But see, it's even stranger and more organic. He's not just an extrinsic figure like a governor. Now, I'm receiving orders. No, no, it's—he's the head, and we're the members. He's the head, and we're the elements in his mystical body. That's how close the identification of Christ with his body, the church, is. He used as an instrument his humanity when he walked the hills of Galilee. Now he uses as his instrument, his mystical body, the church. That's it. That's it. Filled, headed by Christ and now filled up and energized by the Holy Spirit. That's it. Now, I'll end with this, just a glance at the gospel from Matthew, which is making the same point about the ascension. So, Jesus gathers the 11 disciples on a mountain in Galilee. What does he say? All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. See, there it is. Heaven, this transcendent dimensional system, earth, the one that we're used to, he wants to bring them together, and power has been given to him in heaven and with implications on earth. Think square, cube. Think circle, sphere, right?

13:13 is from his ascended position, he includes as his mystical body this world. And all power has been given to him in heaven and on earth. Wonderful, wonderful. But again, he's not going to do this work alone. Listen, go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,