This is the weekend where we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus back into Heaven. And in the back of my head, I always imagine there is a querulous voice somewhere out there saying, "Uh-huh. OK. Yeah. That's great....How do I get through Tuesday?... Jesus went up to Heaven." And you believe it. You wouldn't be here unless there was a kind of dogged faith. But how is it relevant? If you were in Catholic education in the 60's as some of us were, that was the battle cry. Relevant! Be relevant to the kids, especially on the high school and college level. Make it relevant to the kids. Make religion relevant. And I remember one Ascension Thursday in this high school in Poughkeepsie, Catholic school, we had so many snow days that winter that we had to have school on Ascension Thursday, 1969. And a couple of the seniors came up to me and said, "Father, we got a great song for Ascension Thursday." And I said (relevant), "Yes?".... "I'm leaving on a jet plane!" Any of you remember that one? I said, "OK. Sure. Yeah..."

"Yeah. But is it relevant?" That's a very human question. Or is it some etherial theology that we believe in a kind of remote way and then we move on to "How do I get through Tuesday?" Our Lord, several days before He ascended into Heaven, He's at supper the night before He dies (Remember?) with His eleven friends. Judas had gone by then. And He's talking to them about the Ascension. He's talking to them about what's going to happen later, and He says, "You'd be glad that I'm going back to My Father. You should be glad," He says to these eleven guys, "because I go to prepare a place for you.... for you.... and you....and Father.... and the servers, and me. Prepare a place..." That's Jesus talking, not a saint or a Pope.... Christ! And then, almost as if He can see some eyebrows arched among them, He says, "If it were not so, I would have told you.... If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." We're not some globules of gas circulating in some vague place.

OK. Now, we don't know much about Heaven. We wouldn't understand it. If you told a little baby, six or seven months in the mother's womb, "Hey, kid, when you're born you're going to discover music, dancing, falling in love, movies, sexual love, Mozart, Shakespeare... the kid would say, "Huh? Leave me alone. I'm comfortable here. It's warm. It's wet. It's quiet..." And so it is with us in this stage of our spirituality as human beings. We couldn't quite get it. But there are suggestions. There are hints. And when I had freshmen in class, (I love freshmen, high school, because they have a certain ingeniousness. They don't have the defenses of the.... As you get older as a teen you keep up the defense cause you don't want to get hurt. But they were kind of open. And I would say silly things like "I'm going to say a word and you say the first word that comes into your head.... Incarnation.... Redemption.... " And then I would say "Heaven."

And over thirty years, the three most popular answers to the first thing that popped into their heads with the word "Heaven" were peace and quiet, "I'll meet Grandma or Grandpa or Dad" and I'll never forget Damien Riley, "Better than the other place." So Heaven won by default for Damien. But the public library gives peace and quiet, if that's all Heaven is. It's not enough, not enough for us. The kids who used to say, "I'll meet Grandpa or my mom or something, who died" they came closest to Biblical theology. Reunion. They came close.

And, when I had to re-study the Bible a couple of years ago, which I loved (It wasn't boring for a minute!), and we got to the symbols that are in the Bible, you know, the figures of speech to describe Heaven, so we get some kind of hint, the three things, (And I put them all together with the letter "C" because it's easy for me to remember.) Condo, Concert, Comrades. Those are the three most used symbols in the Bible for Heaven. A condo, you know, celestial condominium, a great place to be, mansion, and all. And concert... beautiful beautiful music, your favorite music, the kind that LIFTS you, great music! And Comrades.... Reunion! Grandpa... My momma, who died when I was a little kid. Together. That's the best the Bible can do, and that's not bad.

Now, St. Paul, whose letters are so intricate that I see so many of you going into a kind of coma when the letters are read at Mass. And I don't blame you because they are impacted, impacted theology. He packed so much.... but he once got a glimpse of heaven. It's a famous quote which I've loved since I was a kid. St. Paul got a glimpse of Paradise and he wrote (This is a passage he wrote when he himself was in jail.), "Eye has never seen and the ear has never heard, not has it ever entered into the human imagination the wonderful things God has prepared for us who love him..." Punto finale. He couldn't go on. It was ineffable. That's all he wrote. And we'll have to be content with that.

To continue with symbols... Jesus was lifted up. Well, yeah, how else was He going to indicate to these guys and these women who loved him that He was going into a new dimension of existence, past spatial, temporal dimension as we know it? He was lifted up. And that's the only way they could describe it when they wrote it. He could have disappeared in sections, like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. But He's lifted up. It's a beautiful and dignified, affectionate way to bid goodbye.

And that other line that you and I say every single Sunday, over and over.... "And He was seated at the right hand of the Father...." And again, Damien Riley, who is a happily married man now with kids of his own... But I remember Damien when we were discussing that phrase, "OK. I get the picture." Damien said. "God is sitting there in the front with the beard there, and Jesus on His right hand, over there. And there's the Holy Ghost..." (the word we used in those days, you know, the bird fluttering...) "and we walk around God's throne, singing "Holy.... Holy....Holy.....Holy Smoke!"

It's a catechism image. But it's just an image. Jesus Christ never bored anybody. Read the Gospels. They hated Him or they loved Him. But nobody yawned. If Jesus never bored anybody in life, why would He bore us for all eternity? He won't. "At the right hand" is a Jewish expression. They all knew what it meant. It meant "power." He was a human being. He knows how we feel and ache, and hurt, and laugh. And now He's at the right hand of His Father forever and He's got power. That's all "right hand" means. "At the right hand of God." He's got power. Is that relevant? Yes. Relevant to Tuesday... And He's got power. And it has nothing to do with your feelings. "I feel lousy... I feel great... I wish you'd shut up, Father. I can't wait to go for a swim..." Has nothing to do with your feelings. His power now at the right hand of God is there, always, nothing to do with how we feel at the moment.

Now, just three quick hints. I wish sometimes that I could actually sit down and talk with some of you where you could be un-self-conscious and tell me hints that you've had about Heaven, quietly, and you could be not self-conscious, hints on this planet you've.... "That's a touch of Heaven!" Here are three quick ones. I can only give you mine.

In the second World War (Remember? Some of you do.) the kids from England were sent over here, little boys and girls, because the parents wanted to get them out of London, because of the blitz, the bombing. So they'd send their kids to the United States. Kids would stay here with different families. And then they'd go home at the end of the war. I remember the newsreel. And all that cameraman had to do was just put his camera down there where the boats were coming in to London, and the kids at the railing, waiting to see Mom and Dad, and the parents on the pier in the harbor, waiting to see these.... I mean, the faces, and then finally, the clutching, no words, just... I was a kid myself and I thought, "That's Heaven. That's a hint of Heaven.... Oh-h-h...Back together!"

Another one would be the music that's used in the Bible a lot. My kid brother was a kind of a hood in the 50's, not a gangster, but a hood. And some of you would recall peg pants, ducktail haircuts, sideburns, you know... jazz. But he was in a Catholic high school and they put on a concert and he was in the band, in senior year. And I was waiting there in the audience, and after the thing was over he came down to me and he said, "Mike, did you hear that thing by Puccini?" It was "Un bel di" from Madame Butterfly, that beautiful song. And my brother sat down hard. He said, "God! That was beautiful!" ... The hood... Whoever would have thunk it? And if I had said "You must listen to great opera!" You know... "God!" That unexpected joy is a hint to heaven.

And, finally, the last one is one of the great joys of my being here in this part of the world, is I'm living near my brother, no longer a hood, but the father of a kid himself. And when we took little kid Danny to the beach, I got a hint to heaven. You know, little kid at the beach, gulping in the air and the breeze and the surf and finally, at the end of the day, my brother saying to Danny, a little kid, "OK. Danny, time to go home!" "WHAT? Already!?" Our deepest moments of pleasure on this planet, whether they are cerebral or sensual, material or spiritual, always have that whisper, "It won't last." I always say that to myself. "It'll never last." But in Paradise we are promised that joy is eternal and never boring and no whispering, "Well, it'll end." ....Yeah! Is all this relevant to Tuesday? Yes. He's got power. It doesn't depend on how you feel. If you feel you love Him, you hate Him, you're bored, you don't care... as long as you lift your lips in some kind of prayer.

OK. This old priest I'm always telling you about told me once when I wanted a prayer answered fast, "Pray like a pest. Give Christ no rest." Bad poetry. Good spirituality. "Pray like a pest. Give Christ no rest." Doesn't matter how you feel. Cause He's got power. He's at the right hand of the Father.

Now, if you look over the life of your spiritual life and the prayers you've said (I've got time to do that cause I'm retired, you know.) and I got a big chart in front of me on Thursday at my home where I live and there were about twenty key prayers in my life. Lots of dinky prayers, "Get to the movie on time," all that stuff, but... Twenty key prayers, really came to twenty. And most of them were "Wait." and turned out OK. Most of them were "Hang on and wait." A few were "Yes" right away. But there were seven "No"s to prayers that almost broke my heart. I'm 67, so, in a lifetime there were seven. And I circle them. I have a big chart. And then I traced the seven No's that I got so mad at God, I really cussed at God, you know, aargh! The seven led to where I am now, which is really a great blessing. I'm near my brother and I'm in this beautiful place and I'm in this par..... If it had been Yes to those, I don't know where I'd be now.... Probably locked up. (Well, that would be fine with us. When is this going to be over?...) You know, just locked up in a hospital because I 'd be so tired and crazy. You know, I don't want to teach any more.... Each of the No's that seemed decisively cruel turned out to be a blessing. Maybe you have to be as old as I am to identify with that. And the old corney saying, and I will stop with this, about when God closes one door, He opens another. And many of you may be saying, "Uh-huh. It's a long wait in the corridor."

And sometimes it is, and that's why to the ascended Jesus who's got power, I suggest, as the old priest did to me, "Pray like a pest. Give Christ no rest."