Living with Christ is a guarantee of participation in eternal life

Active Living with Christ is a guarantee of participation in eternal life. Surely at least once in our lives, each of us looks at heights. Not to find out what the weather will be like, to bother with how big space is above us, but to realize the meaning and purpose of your life. Man longs for eternity. How different a person imagines eternity and eternal life! How many books on this topic are written! How many dialogues and monologues, philosophical and theological disputes, and disciplines of eternity have been heard. Ensure that it is not only on this topic that people are divided into believers and non-believers. Both have arguments that may not be convincing. It is true that the closer he leaves this world, the more the thought of God resounds. Somehow the eyes automatically lookup. But we are also witnessing other events.

The grandmother asks her one-year-old granddaughter, “Where is the Lord God, where is Jesus?” She expects the child to point to a picture or cross it on the wall with her finger. But the child points to the place where her heart is with her finger. Grandma is ashamed. Right – the Lord God is everywhere and especially in a pure heart.

Today we are to remember familiar things, but important for our salvation. The Lord Jesus reminds us, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Today’s gospel is especially close to the hearts of believers. Christ is reminded that Jesus’ “mission” on earth is over. Jesus goes to the Father. The words are fulfilled: “I will be with you for a while, then I will go to him who sent me” (Jn 7:33). Jesus’ departure to the Father begins to carry out the command: “You will be my witnesses… To the very edge of the earth” (Acts 1: 8). Apostle disciples become teachers. The Ascension of the Master did not cause the apostles to do what happened when they were captured in Gethsemane: Jesus’ departure to the Father opens to the apostles the horizons and fields of activity Jesus prepared them for three years. What they saw, what they witnessed, they preached to the whole world.

Evangelist St. Luke places the Lord’s ascension on the fortieth day after the resurrection. We understand this time as the time when, after the resurrection of the Lord, a three-year stay with Jesus matures in the apostles. Thanks to the Holy Spirit, the apostles fulfill the words they received from Jesus and fulfill the prophecies of the prophets of the books of the Old Testament. Christ entered heaven, which does not mean that he left his isolated, that he ceased to be in contact with us. Just as Jesus did not cease to be one with the Father during his earthly life, when he accepted the nature of man, so after his ascension, he did not cease to be connected with us. Jesus took his place at the right hand of the Father, as the High Priest, as he himself said, “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand” (Mark 14:62). And the apostle St. Peter writes, “He ascended into heaven and is at the right hand of God” (1 Pt 3.22). By this, we understand that God the Father inaugurates God the Son: “When he raised him from the dead and seated him in his heaven at his right hand over every principality, power, power, and dominion, and over every other name that can be spoken not only in this age but also in the future. He has put all things under his feet and has set him above all the head of the Church “(Ephesians 1: 20-22). Jesus is equal to the Father, but by human nature, he has become our brother. The words confess his equality in power and glory: he sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. “

Christ lives in the Church. None of us can deny this with impunity and frivolity. He who does not belong to Christ, who does not find his place on earth with Christ, will not find his place in his Kingdom in his teaching, cross, suffering, doing good, and devotion. Therefore, we are reminded again that we belong to the Church by baptism, whose head is Jesus. We hope that our homeland is also in heaven. That is why we long for an encounter with Christ, our God, in eternity. He expects us to keep everything he told us in our lives. We realize that the heaven Jesus entered and that we remember today is not far away. We need to understand the sky correctly. He who understands or as a place of pleasure, where the soul will have everything he can think of when he understands or only as of the satisfaction of his material and bodily desires, he has or far. When we know the certainty of heaven in the purity of the heart, it is very close. Or we understand it as a state where there will be no more suffering, pain, and sorrow. If there is any work, it will be joyful, it will not be forced, but it will be done freely and will not cause fatigue. Eternity is joy in God. Seeing God face to face is not only true but also a reward that nothing and anyone can be compared to. The greatest happiness for man will be consciousness: God loves me.

Even though we know on earth about God’s love for us, the state of love cannot be compared to the joy that God has for us in eternity as a reward. In heaven, we, too, will love God more than on earth, and that will be our reward. To love God is a reward. It can be said that it will be an ocean of happiness of love. When we understand heaven in this way, we understand that this state is not distant but a situation in which God is present, and we are with him. At the Ascension, Jesus did not have to travel great distances, understood as light-years, because he himself said, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me” (Jn 14:10).

The apostles saw Jesus leaving; he hovered, moved away, but was united with the Father before and after the Ascension. The mystery of the unity of love between the Father and the Son cannot be expressed in human words. Imagine a deaf person. He sees people dancing, and he is strange, unacceptable to what we call dancing. When he gets a hearing and listens to the music, survives its rhythm, and takes on the beauty of body movement, he does not say that dancing is strange, but he says that dancing is beautiful.

But on earth, we can survive the vestibule of heaven. Imagine a man saying to his wife, “We will work, and one day we will be rich!” And the woman will answer him, “We are already rich, for we have each other.” The apostles looked at the sky at the ascension of the Lord: Then said the angels unto them, O men of a Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken from you to heaven, will come as you saw him go to heaven “(Acts 1:11). We do not look at the sky, the sky with the intention that the sky is up, somewhere far away, high, in the atmosphere, beyond the cosmos, or death, God has taught us that either we seek in ourselves in connection with him, or where man finds God and himself in God.

True, our encounter with God will be fully realized at our death as we walk with Jesus on the whole Easter journey. God is present everywhere, and therefore the sky can be everywhere. For us, the sky is where we are when we live with God. We can already cross the gate of heaven here on earth. When we seek God, and when we find God in ourselves and others, we can live already or on earth. It is right that we use time following God’s will. We live with God.

Let’s remember St. Dominika Sávio. At his first communion, he wrote the motto of life: “It is better to die than sin.” And he not only wrote it but also preserved it. When he died, his father sat by his bed. Dominik woke up for a moment, looked at his father, smiled, and said, “Dad, I see beautiful things.” And he died with a smile on his face.

Today we celebrate the holiday at a time when nature is waking around us; we are looking forward to greenery, flowers, birdsong, warm breezes … We can never think of how beautiful it will be in heaven when the beauty that is here today and fading tomorrow is so charming and evokes joy in us. What is hidden behind the words of the Apostle St. Paul: “Neither the eye hath seen, nor the ear heard, neither the heart hath come out into the heart of man, as God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor 2: 9). on earth, we know and experience the greatness of his love. Yes, the physical ascension of Christ into heaven is, above all, a feast of himself. For he has voluntarily accepted the role of a servant, and the words are true: ” “(Flp 2,9). Apostle St. Paul thinks of the Lord’s name, that is, the highest rank and power.
And for us, it is a guarantee that if we persevere in his love, we will receive a reward. He said, “When I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to me, that you may also be where I am.” And ye shall know the way whither I go ”(Jn 14: 3-4).

We do not see Christ with our natural eyes, but the light of a candle tells us that it is our time to burn with love for God and our neighbors. To fulfill what Jesus rightly expects of us. We do not philosophize, but we believe in the words of Christ, which are for us a guarantee of eternal reward in the Kingdom of love, light, and peace.