Dear Brothers and Sisters, Fiat!
Today, the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is being celebrated. This Solemnity embraces two elements. On the one hand it directs our gaze toward heaven, where the glorified Jesus is seated at the right hand of God (cf. Mk 16:19). On the other, it reminds us of the mission of the Church: why? Because Jesus, Risen and Ascended into heaven, sends his disciples to spread the Gospel throughout the world. Therefore, the Ascension exhorts us to lift our gaze toward heaven, in order to return it immediately to the earth, to implement the tasks that the Risen Lord entrusts to us.
It is what we are invited to do in the day’s Gospel passage, in which the event of the Ascension occurs immediately after the mission that Jesus entrusts to the disciples. It is a boundless mission — that is, literally without boundaries — which surpasses human strength. Jesus says, in fact: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation” (Mk 16:15). The task which Jesus entrusts to a small group of common men lacking great intellectual capacity seems truly too bold! Yet this small company, insignificant compared to the great powers of the world, is sent to bring the message of Jesus’ love and mercy to every corner of the earth.
But this plan of God can be accomplished only with the strength that God himself grants to the Apostles. In this sense, Jesus assures them that their mission will be supported by the Holy Spirit. And he says this: “you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). This is how this mission was able to be accomplished, and the Apostles began this work which was then continued by their successors. The mission that Jesus entrusted to the Apostles has continued through the centuries, and continues still today: it requires the cooperation of all of us. Each one, in fact, by the power of the Baptism that he or she received, is qualified in turn to proclaim the Gospel. Baptism is precisely what qualifies us and also spurs us to be missionaries, to proclaim the Gospel.
The Lord’s Ascension into heaven, while inaugurating a new form of Jesus’ presence among us, calls us to keep eyes and hearts open to encounter him, to serve him and bear witness to him to others. It is a matter of being men and women of the Ascension, that is, those who seek Christ along the paths of our time, bringing his word of salvation to the ends of the earth. On this journey we encounter Christ himself in our brothers and sisters, especially in the poorest, in those who suffer in their very flesh the harsh and humiliating experience of old and new forms of poverty. As at the beginning the Risen Christ sent his Apostles with the power of the Holy Spirit, so too does he send all of us today, with the same power, so as to establish concrete and visible signs of hope. Because Jesus gives us hope. He went to heaven and opened the gates of heaven and the hope that we will reach it.
Regarding the mystery of the Ascension, in the passage of May 12, 1929, Jesus tells Luisa that His Humanity redid within Itself, and over Itself, all the evils of decayed humanity, to the point of dying, in order to give to it the virtue of rising again from the death to which it was subject. This is the reason why Jesus did not leave the Kingdom of His Divine Will upon earth - because the humanity of innocent Adam was missing, glorious and immortal, in order to be able to impetrate It and to receive the great gift of the Fiat. Therefore, it was necessary that Jesus’ Humanity first redo decayed humanity and give to it all the remedies in order to raise it again, and then die and rise again with the qualities of innocent Adam, so as to be able to give to man what he lost. Not only this, but He wanted to ascend into Heaven with His Humanity as beautiful, clothed with light, just as it came out of God’s creative hands, so as to say to the Celestial Father: ‘My Father, look at Me, how my Humanity is redone, how the Kingdom of Our Will is safe in It. I am the Head of all, and the One who prays You has all the rights to ask and to give what I possess.’
An innocent humanity, with all the qualities with which it came out of God’s creative hands, was needed in order to impetrate again the Kingdom of the Divine Will into the midst of creatures. Up to that time it was missing, and Jesus purchased it with His death, and He ascended into Heaven in order to fulfill, with His first task, His second task of impetrating and giving the Kingdom of the Divine Will upon earth. It is about two thousand years that Jesus’ Humanity has been praying, and His Divine Majesty, feeling the love of Creation which He had in creating man overflow from Itself again - or rather, with greater intensity - and feeling Itself being enraptured and charmed by the beauties of Jesus’ Humanity, has poured Itself out again; and opening the Heavens, It has made the rain of light of the many knowledges about the Fiat rain down in torrents, so that, like rain, It may descend upon souls, and with Its light It may vivify and heal the human will, and transforming it, It may cast the root of the Divine Will into the hearts, and may lay Its Kingdom upon earth. In order for the Kingdom to come upon earth, first God had to make It known, He had to make known that It wants to come to reign. And Jesus, as an elder brother of the human family, in order to give to it a purchase so great, is making all the arrangements in Heaven before the Divinity. Therefore, it was necessary that Jesus ascend into Heaven with His Humanity glorified, in order to be able to purchase again the Kingdom of the Fiat for His brothers and children.