Ascension of the Lord and Motherhood

The Gospel of Luke 1:3 begins, "I myself have carefully investigated everything for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."

The Acts of the Apostles 1:1 begins, "In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen."

Notice anything similar? Both are addressed to THEOPHILUS.

Theophilus means lover of God. This lover of God was taught about all the events in the life of Jesus on earth. Interestingly, Luke begins his Gospel, after the fortelling of John's birth, by the announcement of the birth of Jesus by another theophilus, this one called the theotókos, the Mother of God.

What do the motherhood of Mary and the Ascension of the Lord have in common?

1. Both shatter the boundaries between heaven and earth.

How did the Motherhood of Mary shatter the boundaries of heaven and earth?Through her consent to being the receptacle in which the Son of God, the Prince of Heaven, would be conceived, would grow, would be born, and would then live his childhood. From the moment of Jesus' conception, all the earth would know the unfathomable enormity of God's love for us all.

How did the ascension of Jesus shatter the boundaries between heaven and earth? because after he suffered and died on this earth, he then left this earth and descended to the dead, gathering the elect who had gone before him. He later resurrected and ascended into heaven as the Saviour of all humankind and bringing all God's faithful to that eternal dwelling, the Kingdom of heaven. In both instances, the boundaries of heaven and earth had been blurred; they had been shattered.

2. Both bring an intimacy between God and humankind that had previously never been heard of.

With the birth of Jesus, The Son of God took on human flesh. He chose to live and breathe, play and preach among us. He chose to speak the Divine Word to us, to Free us from the chains of sin and death, like no other human being ever could.

With the ascension of Jesus, the disciples would receive the promise of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus would send after he ascended; it is this spirit that would guide us, console us, teach us, and lead us to witness to the world, the hope which we have been given in Jesus Christ.

3. Both events involve the Holy Spirit of God, that dynamic third Person of the Trinity which is the living embodiment of the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father. Indeed, it is that love which eternally spirates the Spirit's presence in our world and generates new life in the Church.

It was through the Holy Spirit that Mary was able to be both Virgin and Mother. It is through the Holy Spirit that Mary was full of grace and able to say an unconditional yes to the invitation of the angel. It is through the Holy Spirit that Mary had been given the ability to surrender her son into the hands of God.

With the ascension, it is only after Jesus' body is physically absent from the world that Jesus needs other physical bodies to carry on his mission: that of proclaiming the good News of the Kingdom of God. So, Jesus promises to send his holy Spirit to dwell within his followers, so that they can always feel and be guided by God's presence even when he himself was physically absent.

On this solemnity of the Ascension is the therefore appropriate to speak of the Church's view of women and motherhood.

Our current pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote a letter in May 2004 "On the Collaboration of Men and Women," approved by John Paul II, in which his theology of women is presented.

Cardinal Ratzinger first acknowledged the existence of two extreme positions in the world:

"Women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men. Faced with the abuse of power, the answer for women is to seek power. This process leads to opposition between men and women in which the identity and role of one are emphasized to the disadvantage of the other, leading to harmful confusion regarding the human person, which has its most immediate and lethal effects in the structure of the family."

"A second tendency emerges in the wake of the first. In order to avoid the domination of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied, viewed as mere effects of historical and cultural conditioning. While the immediate roots of this second tendency are found in the context of reflection on women's roles, its deeper motivation must be sought in the human attempt to be freed from one's biological conditioning. According to this perspective, human nature in itself does not possess characteristics in an absolute manner. All persons can and ought to constitute themselves as they like, since thy are free from every predetermination linked to their essential constitution."

"In light of these currents of thought, the Church, enlightened by faith in Jesus Christ, speaks instead of active collaboration between the sexes precisely in the recognition of the difference between man and woman." ---Looks at Physical, psychological, ontological complimentary. It is sin that destroys this complimentarity.

Reflects that woman in her deepest origin and beginning, exists for the other. (reflects a similarity with the Triune God, whose person are in a communion of love each for the others.)

Women intuitively know those actions which elicit life are good and contribute to the growth and protection of the other. Motherhood, a concrete gift of oneself to the other.

Also talks about virginity as a way to foster life in non-physical ways. Women should be present in the world of work and in the organization of society and have access to positions of responsibility, "to inspire policies that promote innovative solutions to economic and social problems."

Appeals to the example of Mary for all Women.

"To look at Mary and imitate her does not mean that the Church should adopt a passivity inspired by an outdated conception of femininity. Nor does it condemn the Church to a dangerous vulnerability in a world where what counts above all, are domination and power. In reality, the way of Christ is neither one of domination or power. From the Son of God, one learns that this passivity is in reality the way of love…..Far from giving the church an identity based on a historically conditioned model of femininity, the reference to Mary with her dispositions of listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting, places the Church in continuity with the spiritual history of Israel. In Jesus, these attributes become the vocation of every baptized Christian…..While these traits should be characteristic of every baptized person, women in fact, live them with particular intensity and naturalness. In this way, women play a role of maximum importance in the Church's life by recalling these dispositions to all the baptized and contributing in a special way, to showing the true face of the Church, spouse of Christ and mother of believers."