Ascension
The Ascension is one of the hard things to understand. It involves the removal from earth of the best evidence for the resurrection. That is the body of the risen Lord. Why just give people 40 days to see Him? Why not just go to the temple and show everyone? Why not let Jesus hang around for centuries? It is like God does not want to give us too much evidence. He wants us to believe but he wants us to do it as an act of faith. I have the same questions about the church. People ask why the biblical evidence for the papacy isn’t more clear. How should I know? But it is very much like God to leave things unclear. At least to those without the gift of faith it is unclear. Both the resurrection and the papacy are crystal clear to me. Still I understand those who complain about the lack of evidence.
God seems to know we want to struggle in life. We want to explore. We want to learn. Then when we discover a truth we want to tell others. It is a true joy. In fact, when they talk about heaven where everyone knows everything and everyone completely it kind of sounds boring to me. Learning, reasoning, teaching, and debating are some of my favorite things to do. That all goes away if there is no great unknown.
This is one of the great things about the Catholic faith. There is a body of truth that it knows but there are always deeper truths that are yet to be known. Every generation has the thrill of discovering new truths. When you have a static foundation for truth. That is what you know infallibly does not change over time. Then you can only reason so far away from your foundation. After a while you run into so many questions that have no solid anwer that there is no point going further. So you debate the same questions over and over. Protestantism has this with Sola Scriptora and secularism has it as well with a much smaller set of foundational truths.
Catholicism does not do this. People have had great fun debating the immaculate conception and the assumption of Mary. But we are done with that now. They are now part of the foundation we start with. So we can contemplate what they mean. The oak tree that started out as an acorn on Pentecost can grow a few more branches. Same thing with contraception and women’s ordination. We don’t debate whether those things are in God’s will or not. We know they are not. The really interesting debate is what can we say about the man, woman, sex, and procreation now that we know these things for sure? That is why theology of the body is so interesting. Sure it confirms for us the morality we already knew. But more importantly it allows us to understand God better and understand ourselves better.
Pope Bendict commented on this to the Catholic University audience:
This same dynamic of communal identity - to whom do I belong? - vivifies the ethos of our Catholic institutions. A university or school’s Catholic identity is not simply a question of the number of Catholic students. It is a question of conviction - do we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22)? Are we ready to commit our entire self - intellect and will, mind and heart - to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals?
If you are going to spend all your time being skeptical of Christ’s revelation then you are not really doing Catholic scholarship as it should be done. You are really accepting the secular world’s definition of what is the foundation of knowledge we can trust. Are they using a foundation of faith or a foundation of secualrism?