What did he say?

When they had gathered together they asked him,
"Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
He answered them, "It is not for you to know the times or seasons
that the Father has established by his own authority.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
throughout Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth."


I guess I have a strange sense of humor because I can see what would happen if I had been one of the Apostles on this occasion when Jesus was leaving and had just finished His last conversation and was ascending to heaven when I say "What did He say?"  

Truly, this must have been a scary moment for the Apostles.  They knew that they had been entrusted by Jesus to spread the Gospel far and wide.  Up until now, they could ask Him questions and He would physically answer them.  They could elicit clarifications and assure themselves that they understood exactly what the Savior meant when he said this or that.  Well, that time was over for them.  They must have thought that they would have to depend on their collective memories to teach the Gospel.  They must have felt pretty much overwhelmed at the task that they were left with. Yes, they heard something He said about the Holy Spirit and that they would receive power, but being normal, ordinary men, they could not fathom what that could mean.  As we know, they pretty much locked themselves back into the upper room. They spent the time praying and wondering what they were going to do next. 

We are pretty much powerless beings. I mean, we have our strength and our minds to see us through things. Both of these things serve us well. So well that some people go through their whole life relying on nothing more than these two things and they live fairly decent and happy lives.  This makes sense too because if our mind and our strength were not equal to the tasks of day to day living we would long ago have become extinct. Our powerlessness exists in the realm of spirituality.  Our ancestors proved we were weak, they ate the forbidden fruit, they walked away from God.  God could have left us to our fate of living for a certain time and then entering eternity forever shut out from Him.  We would have spent our years on earth in sweat and toil only to be welcomed to an afterlife of loneliness and bitter cold and darkness.  But God would not allow this to happen.  We were to be given another chance, He would prove His love and in the fullness of time, He did so through His Son, Jesus.  He would have to bolster the lessons He taught and He would make sure that the men that He left would have all of the help that they needed.  The coming of the Holy Spirit would form a holy partnership between God and man.  This partnership would serve to broadcast worldwide the truth that God was in love with man and wanted him to spend eternity with Him.  But, until the Spirit came, we have the Apostles waiting and talking and being fearful and remained locked away. 

In our lives today we are empowered by the same Spirit as the Apostles received.  We may not have felt much on the day that the bishop conferred the sacrament upon us but that power has always been there waiting for us to tap it and when we do that partnership of God and man makes things happen that some would consider impossible.  Christ has ascended to heaven and we await His return.  But, those two men dressed in white that asked the Apostles what they were looking at, why, they say the same things to us.  Get moving, you can do it, you have the power, its always been there.  Let the world know the things you know, give them the Good News, the Spirit dwells in you and begs to be released on an unsuspecting world. 

Please pray for the poor souls in Purgatory.  They are waiting for our help and there are many of them that have no one to pray for them.   Thank you.