Ascension Sunday: Hope for Humanity and Gratitude for God’s Good Gifts

“No matter what, just keep looking up and trust ‘til you bust!”

Rita E. (my mother)

For many of us, the feast of the Ascension has been transferred to today. I love this feast and the virtue of hope with which it’s associated. One can never have too much hope, I find. (What’s the expression? Ah yes: a sad saint is one sad saint!)

Today let us pray for each other and for those who are threatened by discouragement and despair. I do not take for granted the power of our prayers! Yesterday, for example, I had no sooner lobbed a prayer request your way than I watched—in wonder and with thanks—as the black clouds began to disperse one. by. one and my happy smile and confidence returned. My husband thanks you! He is so patient with me, that man.

I offered up my Holy Hour this morning for your intentions, as promised last Sunday and which made for a most agreeable 60 minutes. My thoughts were on the women who work so hard for the glory of God and for the raising up of His little soldiers! We are on our way but we’re not there yet.

In preparation for today’s feast, the kids and I have praying the Glorious mysteries. John Michael is most fond of the 4th Glorious mystery, having been born on August 15th, but this past week we focused more on the 2nd: the Ascension of Our Lord.

Sometimes as we are praying our decade I like to insert a mini-meditation or two, usually in between the Aves. When I intoned, “And as Jesus ascended to the Father, the apostles stood there gaping, with their mouths hanging open in wonder,” John Michael interrupted. “The Bible doesn’t say that!”

And I had to admit that no, it doesn’t. But do you not think there was at least one slack-jawed saint among the bunch? I laugh to think that there probably was, and I also think that this is a reflection of who we are as God’s creatures. Our mouths hang open as we watch what He accomplishes. His grace and his goodness are no small things. Do you have a baby in your arms right now or perhaps nestled at your breast? Then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

One last little story and then I’m off to start breakfast for the masses. During our read-aloud last night, our two littlest girls were very squirrelly and very loud. They giggled, they shrieked, they carried on…as only 2- and 4-year-olds can do. My husband took them off our hands so that we could concentrate on our reading—we were at that exciting scene where Praiseworthy proposes a clever economic transaction between Mr. Azariah Jones and Monsieur Gaunt—and as I read to our three oldest, I could hear my husband reading also. In calm, quiet tones he read to my youngest girls and they grew so suddenly still that I had to take a peek at what he was reading.

In truth, I couldn’t believe my eyes. This is what he was reading, and this was the narrative with which he lulled them:

Concentrations of terpenes have been estimated in the wild at 1-5 ppm near some soft corals with 5-10 ppm causing 100% mortality in some stony corals within 8 hours and 10-20 ppm killing small fishes. The effects of dilution in the ocean are enormous, and it is likely that closed-system aquariums have significantly higher and prolonged exposure to levels at least this high in many cases. These secondary metabolites, or allelopathic toxins, are thought to act primarily by accumulating in the tissue of other corals. As the box on page 74 illustrates, soft corals can also produce lethal effects on fishes in closed systems.

For a full ten minutes they sat there, rapt–a girl to each knee and the blanket pulled up close around them. Clearly they didn’t care a whit about the text being dry as dust because they had their doting daddy close at hand. What more could a little girl ask for?

A reminder: today we can begin a novena to the Holy Spirit that will end on Pentecost Sunday (one of my favorite all-time favorite feasts!) Get your red outfits ready!

The above painting is Ascension by John Singleton Copley (1775). Oil on canvas. 81 x 73 cm. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA.