Happy Feast of the Ascension of our Lord! Today we remember and celebrate the historical event of Jesus ascending body and soul into heaven. In a remarkable way, this event shows to us our greatest destiny as human beings. We were ultimately created to be wholly taken up into God, into the very life of the Blessed Trinity. As it was with Jesus, this is not meant to be some disembodied experience but rather our whole selves, body and soul, will be united to God in an indescribable way!
I can’t help but count it as a clear act of Divine Providence that on the eve of the feast of the Ascension of our Lord (traditionally celebrated 40 days after Easter, namely, this past Thursday), we received a rather compelling letter from our Archbishop, which was jointly signed by all the other bishops in the state of Minnesota. In this letter the Archbishop clearly gives each parish within this Archdiocese permission to resume public celebration of the Holy Mass as early as Tuesday, May 26
th.
I count this as a stroke of Divine Providence in that this permission underscores the truth that while we must have deep concern and love for our neighbor, reasonable access to worship of our God is
essential to our lives of faith precisely because to be fully human means to always be in movement toward God. On this Feast in which we see our God-given destiny through the humanity of Jesus being caught up into the Divine Life of the Trinity, we rejoice and give thanks to God for allowing us to be able to more fully partake in the life of the Trinity here on earth in and through the celebration of the Holy Mass. In the Holy Mass, our most profound movement in and upward toward God takes place.
Nevertheless, each parish must be ready to implement and follow certain strict health precautions before resuming the public celebration of the Mass. Fr. Sandquist, your parish staff, volunteers, and I are working to devise a plan for how to do this well. In the meantime, our current train of thought is to continue with outdoor Masses on the weekends if the weather permits. We are working on making it possible for us to return to a daily Mass schedule within the church building as soon as possible. As always, we will keep you informed when this can happen as well as when and how we will return to Mass within the church building on weekends.
In the meantime, rejoice with me on this Feast of the Ascension. Our hearts have longed to gather once again to worship the Lord together. Our prayers are being answered. We do not need to wait much longer. Lastly, I encourage you to please read the Archbishop’s letter which can be found on our parish website and our parish Facebook page. May God bless you all!