The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
Have you ever had swimming lessons? Maybe you were a kid, or a grown-up kid, but the experience is still the same. We’re carried into the pool, or maybe it’s a lake that we’re thrown into, and we cautiously ease into the shallow end. Our confidence might evaporate the deeper we go -- on land, we knew (mostly) what we were doing. But, someone tells us what to do, how to breathe and what to do with our hands. We learn to float, to blow bubbles, and to get water up your nose and why we never want to do that again.
I always got scared when my swim teacher asked me to push off the wall: “I won’t step back,” she’d say, arms outstretched to me. But she did. Every. Single. Time. Eventually, we’d be half-way to the scary deep end, she tricked me! She’d gently pick me up as I floundered in fear so I could catch my breath. I was always safe. Eventually, I learned to swim and loved it.
For most of us, the pool is refreshing. Even just a foot in the water can bring such sweet relief on a hot or stressful day. Some cannonballs into the deep end, a day on some beach chairs at the waves, even a walk on a dock can be a simple joy.
I always imagined the Ascension as a window into the Apostles’ own sort of swimming lessons: being thrown into the deep end after just figuring out how to float. They just witnessed the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, and then saw their Lord appear among them in daily life for 40 days: a long walk, at the well, a locked room…
Each of these, small affirmations of His beloved disciples. We know well that their doubts would still remain, but these Apostles would go to the ends of the earth and share the Good News. Some would never return home.
When Jesus was lifted up into the sky into a cloud, two men asked the Apostles: “Why are you standing there looking at the sky?”
We might ask ourselves the same question when Christ appears to us. He might appear in signs among our family and friends at dinner, next to the stranger at the store, or even in the peace by the waterside. We know He does appear in the Eucharist at Mass and in the Sacraments. It’s in these moments we should let the memory and grace of the lessons Christ has taught us come alive and remember His peace.
James Ramos is a Texas-based photo-journalist and designer. He loves swimming, ice cream, a solid TikTok and anything by Father Henri Nouwen. Follow him on Instagram for more of his writing and photography.