Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord 2024

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
May 12, 2024

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

So today is Mother’s Day, so Happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers, and grandmothers and expectant mothers!

God bless you all for bringing us the gift of life! 

I always think it’s so beautiful that Mother’s Day falls in the month of May, which is Mary’s Month.

In God’s great plan for salvation history, Jesus came into this world and was born from the womb of a mother, just as each one of us was.

In his humanity, Jesus knew what it was like to be cradled in his mother’s arms. He knew the tender care of his mother, he knew her warmth and love. He listened to the sound of her voice and he turned to her, and watched her, and he learned from his mother.

The Gospel tells us, as we know, that Jesus spent thirty years at home, and that his mother Mary helped him to grow up strong and filled with wisdom, and she prepared him for his ministry of salvation.²

And I just had the privilege last week to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France where Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette. It was a beautiful pilgrimage with the Order of Malta.

And I was reflecting about how when Our Lady was smiling when she appeared to St. Bernadette.

This is the mother’s special role in our lives. Mothers show us the “smile” of God, they show us how much we are loved by our Father in heaven.

Through our mothers, and also our fathers, we come to know that we are God’s children, that we are special to him, and that he has a beautiful plan, that he wants us to do in our lives — beautiful things that God wants us to do.

So, today we ask our Blessed Mother to keep all our mothers close to her heart as they carry out their important mission in the Church and in our families and in our society. We ask her to pray, too, for all our mothers who have gone before us to heaven.

It is indeed a beautiful day — so to all mother’s Happy Mother’s Day.

Today in our liturgy we are also celebrating a key turning point in the history of salvation. We remember that day, forty days after Easter, when Jesus Christ ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God.

Our first reading today takes us back to that moment and so does our Gospel reading.

In both of these readings, we are standing with his first disciples and listening to our Lord’s last words. With the disciples, we look on as Jesus is lifted up in a cloud and taken from our sight up into the sky!

It’s a powerful and amazing scene! And in this moment of his earthly life, in the last time in his earthly life — Jesus is still teaching us. By his Ascension, Jesus shows us: that where he has gone, we can go, too.

Jesus is taken up in the cloud to go before us, to open heaven’s door for us; he goes, just as he promised he would, to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house.

So, the Ascension gives us a new direction in our lives — a new destination.

Jesus is showing us the way. And now he is inviting us to follow him.

And we know that when we follow him — when we try to love as Jesus teaches us to love, when we try to live with kindness and compassion — then our life becomes a beautiful pathway that will lead us to the heavenly kingdom, where we will live forever with him and with the angels and saints.

But we can’t go to heaven alone, we need to bring others with us! That’s what Jesus is telling us today.

I’m sure that you noticed, Jesus’ last words to his disciples in today’s passage of the Gospel — those words are a call to mission! He says: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature!”

So the Ascension, as I was saying before, gives us a new destination, which is heaven. But the Ascension also gives our lives a new purpose, a mission.

Jesus is taken up into the highest heaven but he leaves us to continue his work on earth. He entrusts us with the duty to proclaim his love and salvation to every person we meet. He says: “You will be my witnesses.”

There’s a whole world that needs to hear the good news that God is real, the good news that God is alive, and that God is love!

There are so many people who need to hear this truth. In our families, among our friends, our coworkers. There are so many people who are longing for a deeper friendship with Jesus!

So, my dear brothers and sisters, as we celebrate today this glorious solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ and as we prepare for the Holy Spirit to come at Pentecost next week, let us ask our Lord to “enlighten the eyes of our hearts,” that we may be his witnesses and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.

Let us always turn to our Blessed Mother Mary, the Queen of Heaven, to help us.

May Our Lady help us to fulfill the beautiful mission that her Son entrusts to us, with our eyes open to heaven and our hearts open to our brothers and sisters here on earth.