Joke: "Life is unfair. I lost my car keys at a ball game and never found them. I lost my sunglasses at the beach and never found them. I lost my socks in the washing machine and never found them. I lost three pounds on a diet--I found them and five more."

Just as “I lost three pounds on a diet, and I found them and five more,” the Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven found himself is still with us together with the Holy Spirit as well. Was Jesus taken up into heaven and left us alone? Abandon us? In today’s Alleluia verse reminds us that Jesus is with us always until the end of the world. Is he still with us? Not physically, but Spirit? Or how?

Visiting Holy Land, there are three Ascension Churches, one was erected by Queen Helena recalling from chapter one of the Acts of the Apostles that Jesus took his disciples to the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath’s day’s journey from Jerusalem, blessed them and commissioned them, and then ascended into heaven. The second Church was erected called the Chapel of the Ascension which later became a mosque possessed by Muslim. The third one is the Russian Church of Ascension whose tower has marked the skyline of Jerusalem since it was built in 1878. In these three places claimed the place of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus, the first one was the most impressive one because in this Church of Ascension, in 384 AD, a pilgrim by the name Egeria found two large foot prints embedded in the rock believed that precisely the point where Jesus was taken up into heaven. Therefore, Jesus left us with his two footprints?

Is he still with us after he’s taken up into heaven? How would we know that he’s still with us now? Either physically or spiritually? Or how would he be with us? How would we recognize him if he is still with us?

In today’s Gospel, Saint Luke reminds us that, “As [Jesus] blessed [his disciples,] he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.” The Lord Jesus might not be physically among us just as he was with his disciples, but his blessing is always with us. The kind of blessing that he himself received from God the Father that Saint Paul was convicted and shared with the Ephesians community saying, “far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come.” His blessing is extended through the hands of the priest since his hands are consecrated at his ordination that he acts en persona Christi , he acts in the person of Christ. So, the priest’s blessing is the extension of the Lord Jesus’ blessing that any religious article, statue, rosary, or etc. that is blessed by the hands of the priest, it cannot be trashed but has to be burnt or buried.

Not only his blessing he left us, but also as he promised to his disciples before he’s taken up into heaven, reported in today’s first reading, taken from the book of Acts of the Apostles saying, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” In his blessing extended through the hands of a priest accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are invited to live our baptismal call to be priest, prophet, and king. The decision is yours.