Easter begins in joy but Eastertide ends with a hint of sadness. Just as Good Friday is the day of great sorrow, which makes way for the joy of Easter, so the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord can bring a different sort of sadness, which makes way for the joy of Pentecost. The hint of sadness on the feat of Ascension is something like the first or last day in school, a change of job. The difference between the departure of Christ is that we are called not just to grow as people; we are to grow in Christ himself. We take the past with us, remembering with love the people and the places God gave us to live with and in. even if we have a terrible past, we can still have some hope that out of the evils of the past, God will prepare a greater good.
Faith tells us that all is prepared. There are many days when we don’t know what is to happen or what we are to do. We feel that, like the disciples on the day of Ascension, we are still standing on the road looking up at the sky where Christ has ascended. We forget that Christ is the way. So prayer is not just a way of receiving instructions about what to do next. Prayer lets us go further down the road, without needing to know where it leads. The priestly prayer of Christ, as it is called, of which we hear part in today’s Gospel, is a conversation with the Father where Jesus explains that His leaving us behind is an act of love. It is love because perfect love always means trusting the person we love.