Lector's Notes | To the home page![]() of Lector's Notes | |
The Ascension of the Lord, Years A, B & C,
|
In any case, the original audience for both the gospel and Acts were Gentile converts to Christianity, in cosmopolitan Greece, after the deaths of the apostles. These new members needed information about the origins and the spread of the community they were joining. In particular, it must have comforted them to learn that even the first, closest followers of Jesus misunderstood his intentions ("Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?")
Proclaiming it: Emphasize the sentence about waiting for "the promise of the Father, ...[to] be baptized with the Holy Spirit." That enables your hearers to relate this reading with the coming feast of Pentecost.
Jesus' last words, which you should emphasize appropriately, set the agenda for all of the book of Acts: "and you will be my witnesses ... to the ends of the earth."
The first half of the reading is about what can happen to us when God gives us the Spirit (another Pentecost reference). The promised benefits are wonderful. But, as you've seen, the grammar of this monstrous sentence is more than challenging. So in preparing to proclaim it, divide it not into sentences (subject, verb, object) but into images. Think of reading not a sentence but a list of phrases, like chapter titles in a book's table of contents. Some of the chapter titles refer to God:
The letter to the Hebrews was written for Jewish converts to Christianity who were missing the rituals and institutions of Judaism. One of those was the annual entrance of their priest into an innermost part of the temple for a ritual sacrifice. For all the ceremonies and functionaries that the converts forfeited upon their conversion, the author shows that Jesus replaces and surpasses what they lost.
Now the style of argumentation here will seem odd to those formed in Western traditions. It's the style of first century rabbis, a logic familiar to its original audience, but seeming tortured to most of us now. In this instance, it's a series of contrasts: "The Jewish priest does this, but Christ does that." Except to us the relationships between their respective accomplismments are not so clear. Perhaps a table will clarify them:| Old Way (in Judaism) | New Way (in Christ) |
| Priest enters a man-made sanctuary | Christ enters heaven |
| The next contrast is not between Old Way and New, but between all other humans and Christ | |
| Priest offers sacrifice annually | Christ appears once before God at the end of ages, to take away sin by his sacrifice |
| All men and women die once, then appear for judgment | Jesus was offered once, and will appear bringing salvation |
| Priest enters sanctuary with lamb's blood | We have confidence of entry into heaven through Jesus' blood |
| Priest enters sanctuary through a veil | We enter through the veil that is Christ's flesh |
| He's just a priest | Christ is "a great priest over the house of God" |
| Several other commentaries on these passages. All are thoughtful, all quite readable, from the scholarly to the popular.
Links may be incomplete more than a few weeks before the "due date." | |||
|
Father Roger Karban's 2002 column on these readings
and his 2003 column on the Acts and Ephesians readings, plus Mark 16:15-20 (year B). | Bible Study pages of Saint Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, Picayune, Mississippi | ||
|
America, the Jesuit weekly magazine, now posts its older The Word columns online. Read these back issues covering the readings for this feast:
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, | |||
| The Text This Week; links to homilies, art works, movies and other resources on the week's scripture themes |
Saint Louis University's standard-setting site for Sunday liturgy. Of the six writers whose works are posted, all cover the readings of Easter 7 and three have essays about Ascension readings, too.
| ||
The Lectionary selections in the frame at the left, if any, are there for your convenience. The publishers of the page in that frame have no connection, except for membership in the one Body of Christ, with the publisher of this page. Likewise the publishers of the pages on the links above.
Last modified: Tue May 1 20:38:47 CDT 2007