Not a Hazardous and Technically Unexplainable Journey

Near the end of the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy and the wizard prepare to leave Oz and return home in a balloon. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t go according to plan.) The wizard explains to the crowd that he is going to “embark upon a hazardous and technically unexplainable journey into the outer stratosphere!” However, the balloon prematurely gets untethered, and with only the wizard on board, lifts off and leaves Dorothy stranded. As the bungling wizard is carried away, Dorothy cries, “Oh! Come back! Come back! Don't go without me!” “I can't come back!” the wizard responds, “I don't know how it works! Goodbye, folks!” 

That is not what Jesus’ ascension was like. Nor was it like the next scene in the movie, when Dorothy learns that all along she’s always had the power to return home; all she’s had to do is click her heels three times and keep saying, “There’s no place like home.” Jesus didn’t get carried up into the sky on some technically unexplainable journey. Jesus fulfilled his mission and returned to the Father, “symbolized by the cloud and by heaven.” It’s so important that we say it every Sunday in the creed.

Christ’s physical humanity may have left us at the ascension, but he’s still with us spiritually. He told us at the last supper “I am with you always.”  Just as Jesus wants us to follow him on earth, he wants us to follow him to heaven. As the Catechism says, “Christ has opened the way to heaven for us” (CCC 661). 

When Dorothy returned home, the movie was over. When Jesus fulfilled his ministry on earth, the miracle of his ascension lets us know that his story is not over. We’re Christ’s humanity now. St. Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours … yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” And as the two angels said, “Stop standing around. It’s time to get to work on that heaven thing.”

–Jim Healy

Send Us Forth are reflections written by St. Matthew parishioners and friends.