By Edward Foley, OFM, Cap., May 19, 2026
If you’d like to listen to Fr. Foley, please visit Old St. Patrick’s podcast series, and select no. 638.
I 6have a growing number of friends
who have reached the point that they do not or cannot
watch national news or any U.S. news with any regularity.
Maybe you’ve reached that point as well.
While there are multiple reasons for this trend,
one undeniable factor is the high negativity of US news.
This was first documented during the Covid Pandemic.
One study discovered what it labeled the “global news gap.”
This analysis of over 9 million news stories found that
major international news outlets
had a negativity rating of about 54%
But parallel reporting in the US during
had a negativity rating of 91%.
Recent studies suggest that things have not changed
and the “negativity gap” is now
a permanent feature of U.S. news.
Maybe that is why CNN introduced the Saturday podcast
5 Good Things as a kind of negativity “palate cleanser”
in the face of a barrage of grim headlines;
Or why droves of people seek out “feel-good” journalism,
especially stories of people’s triumph over adversity,
like Sabastian Sawe, raised by his grandmother
in a house that had no electricity
but energized the sports world with his electric performance
as the first human to break the 2-hour marathon barrier.
And then there was the riveting 10-day lunar trip of Artemis II.
As some Old Saint Patrick’s [where I preach] folk know first-hand,
running a marathon is demanding
but space travel is more than demanding, it is dangerous
especially when you are traveling at Mach 30
your heat shield reaches a temperature
roughly half as hot as the Sun’s Surface
and you find yourself almost 250,000 miles away
during a nail-biting communication blackout.
In the glow of the Artemis II success, I was musing,
on this Ascension feast, about whether Jesus’ metaphorical lift off
was equally as dangerous, and after some reflection
my answer is an unequivocal yes.
Part of that is the sheer physiology of it all
especially if you imagine the Ascension
as the biblical equivalent of Elton John’s Rocketman
if so, the dangers include:
- asphyxiation at 26,000 feet from lack of oxygen
- evaporation of the body’s moisture at 60,000 feet
- and extreme temperature from roughly minus 130 degrees in the troposphere to 3600 degrees in the thermosphere finally obliterating whatever was left of Jesus’ body.
Of course today’s feast and accompanying readings
are not about the Son of God, in the spirit of Star Trek,
“going where no one has gone before”:
Theologically he already achieved that in his death and resurrection.
Furthermore this feast is not some historical anniversary
of the physical transit of the Jesus body from earth to heaven;
and no one proves that more than the Evangelist Luke.
Often celebrated as the most gifted storyteller of the New Testament
Luke actually gives us two conflicting accounts of the Ascension:
- one in his Gospel in which Jesus appears to ascend on Easter Sunday
- and one in the book of Acts read today, in which Jesus ascends after 40 days.
This is not evidence that Luke was on the brink of losing it,
but rather is evidence that the evangelist, as always,
is not giving us history but theology.
So back to my question:
was Jesus “metaphorical” or more properly “theological lift off”
which we celebrate today
as or more dangerous than the Artimus II mission?
My answer remains a firm yes:
as well explained by the decidedly untrue story,
of a post-ascension moment
after the disciples had gathered on that mountain
and Jesus disappeared from their sight.
Apparently an angel – sort of a divine script supervisor –
was surprised to see Jesus passing by and asked:
“where are you going?”
Jesus answered, “to be back to be with my Father.”
But the angel protested,
“I thought you were going to bring salvation to the whole world!”
Jesus said, “I have:
death is vanquished
sinners are reconciled
and the marginalized invited into the heart of God;
My work is done.”
Still the Angel persisted:
“But who is going to be your witness and go out into the world and spread the Good News and tell people you love them?”
Jesus motioned toward the rag-tag group of followers — the ones who ran away at the cross, who argued about who was the greatest, hid behind locked doors in fear — and said, “They are.”
The angel looked down at them, tilted her head and asked the only begotten a question that yet haunts us: “Do you have a Plan B?”
In a nutshell, today’s feast is divine affirmation
that there is no plan B
and we are the only salvific strategy Jesus has!
Years ago I read a riveting and deeply disturbing piece of non-fiction
by Dr. Karla Holloway, Emerita professor at Duke University.
The book was Passed On: African American Mourning Stories:
a portrait of death and dying in 20th century African America.
Central are reflections on the vulnerability of African Americans
– especially young Black men – to untimely death
and how that is inextricably linked
to our perception of Black culture.
More than 20 years after reading this 2004 publication
today’s feast triggered the memory of one heartbreaking story:
As recounted by his mother, it concerned “Junior,”
a 28-year-old Black man incarcerated in the Durham County Jail
for a probation violation.
During his incarceration he purportedly experienced
a medical emergency which, according to official records,
attributed his subsequent death to a heart condition.
His family did not buy it.
After his death, the family sought to reclaim his body for burial
but was met with a bureaucratic nightmare.
Due to a series of errors, miscommunications and negligence
the body was misplaced.
It was eventually learned that Junior’s body
had been cremated without the family’s knowledge or consent.
The family was left in the agonizing position of holding a funeral with an empty casket. The question “Where’s the body?” became a cry for justice and an inditement of how institutions can fail to “see” or respect Black life.
In a phrase, the State “disappeared him”; His “homecoming ritual” was denied and his family left in unresolved grief.
“Where’s the body” is a refrain that still haunts the global community.
During the Argentinian dictatorship between 1976 and 1983
an estimated 30,000 people “were disappeared” by the state.
On our own southern border,
thousands of remains have been recovered
with the estimate that for every 1 found 5 others are lost.
And then there are the missing children in the US.
According to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center
each year there are typically between 25,000 and 30,000
active missing children records at any given time.
In some ways, today’s feast resurfaces the haunting question:
“where’s the body?”
but also provides a breathtaking response.
My great colleague and former writing partner Herbert Anderson
once penned a most provocative homily about the Ascension.
His main point: this is a feast about God’s empathy.
He explains by suggesting that in the Ascension
Jesus has taken our humanity back into the presence of God:
Mary’s tears, Peter’s Fears, the betrayal of Judas
the conversion of Zacchaeus, the courage of the Magdalene
and Jesus’ own experiences of desert temptation,
public rejection, abandoned suffering, and dying in shame.
Each is a breathtaking depiction of the human story.
Then in a stunning moment of empathetic clarity Herbert suggests
that in the Ascension Jesus carried into the presence of God
a scrapbook of pictures illustrating what it is to be human
and in a final aerial snapshot
Jesus brings to the heart of the Trinity
the heartache left behind by his own ascension:
an obscuring of the Sacred Heart,
a masking of the incarnate empathy revealed
in the only begotten,
an apparent distancing of the divine consolation
for which Junior’s and millions of families long.
And so many enduring questions:
in a world where Sudanese children starve
and parents in Gaza stay awake at night to protect
their offspring from an invasion of rats
where is the compassion?
In a world where the innocent are killed
in Lebanon, Ukraine, and our own city streets
where is the humanity?
And in a world with so many physical and social prisons
where God seems markedly absent, even a joke,
we ask again: “where’s the body?”
Following World War II, villagers in the town of Muenster, Germany began the painstaking process of rebuilding their lives and their church, which was nearly leveled by Allied bombing. Among the ruins was a treasured crucifix that once stood above the altar but now was badly damaged. The legs were scarred and both of Christ’s arms had been severed.
The villagers asked a local sculptor if he could restore the statue. He agreed and began the restoration work. But when it came time to carve new hands he stopped, telling priest and parishioners that he decided to leave the statue exactly as it was: without arms or hands. Parishioners were equally confused and angry. “How can we have a savior with no hands?” they asked. In response, the sculptor carved a small plaque and placed it at the base of the crucifix. Citing a now famous line of medieval poetry it read:
“Ich habe keine anderen Hände als die euren …
I have no hands but yours.”
Given today’s feast, maybe we could reimagine that sign
as reading “I have no plan B.”
On this feast of holy empathy
as the Trinity revels in the humanity that returned to God
in the mystery of the ascension
we pray that humanity might revel in the divine empathy
we are now commissioned to dispense
as the hands and feet, the enduring human enterprise
that God has eternally sanctioned
through Christ our Lord.
If you’d like to listen to Fr. Foley, please visit Old St. Patrick’s podcast series, and select no. 638.
Edward Foley, OFM, Cap,Duns Scotus Professor of Spirituality Emeritus and retired Professor of Liturgy and Music at Catholic Theological Union, has authored or edited 33 books. His works are translated into 9 languages. A celebrated preacher and presenter, he received a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation for Preaching and the Sciences and another from the Lilly Endowment. A recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, the North American Academy of Liturgy, the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, Aquinas Institute, and Barry University, as well as a preaching fellowship at Notre Dame University, he has lectured in over 70 dioceses throughout the English-speaking world.
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