A New Humanity
May 29, 2022: A reflection for the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord
In today’s feast, Jesus returns to the one who sent him: the Father, the giver of life. He has fulfilled his mission as the Son of Man or the Son of Humanity and his final gift is to send us the Promise of the Father, the Spirit, to be with us, to teach us all things and to remind us of all that he has told us.
Jesus’ mission is multi-layered but the one that seems to shed the most light for our life as children of God is this: Jesus’ mission is to be a human being as God made us to be. Jesus is, as Paul calls him, the new man, or the new humanity. He represents the essence of what it means to be a human.
This means that our humanity takes life and spills forth from the Divine indwelling in us. And this spilling forth of the Divine is brought forth in the teachings and parables of Jesus.
“Learn from me,” he says. Not learn about me only, but learn from me. Live from your center, let me in. Follow me. Take my words from the theoretical to the real by applying them to your daily life where I meet you, moment to moment.
Be yourself a new humanity. I am sending you the Spirit to help you along The Way. To quote Paul again, “Put on the New Man or New Humanity, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”
This is the Kingdom.
What would it be like if everyone put on the New Humanity, the one created in Jesus? Heaven, for sure, but certainly worth all we have and are to try to live.
God asks only that we open ourselves to this New Humanity, the Person of Jesus, and to yield ourselves to him. In other words, to follow him. It can’t be a head trip only. It has to be all of us, inside and out. That kind of following.
Jesus, you didn’t leave us orphans when you returned to the Father. You are still with us through your Spirit as we yield ourselves to follow you.
Send upon us the Promise of the Father that we may become the New Humanity that we are created to be in you. Help us take his yoke upon ourselves and learn from him to have hearts of flesh, the kind of hearts that walk in love, kindness, peace, and justice. To know that we are one human family, and all share the same Great Heart of God in our depths. To be the Kingdom. And as the hymn we had at Vigils this morning said, “Learn to live in love.”