Prayer for Mothers

Heavenly Father,
from the beginning you have chosen to entrust
the human person to mothers in a special way.
We thank and praise you for the gift of mothers;
for their tenderness, care, and compassion,
for their intuition and encouragement,
for commitment and sacrifice.
Bless all mothers this day.
Keep, strengthen, and refresh them
in your loving care.
May they be blessed by our open-hearted
love and gratitude. Amen.

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Feast of the Ascension of the Lord

On this Feast of Ascension, Jesus is commissioning the disciples to go and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. A ‘commission’ means a task or matter entrusted to one as an agent for another. We are entrusted with a mission that Jesus himself wanted to do.

  “After speaking to them, the Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven and took his place at the right hand of God” (Mk 16:19). After the incident of Ascension, Jesus is no more present in this world in the physical human form. Today we are the ones who represent Jesus in this world. We are the ambassadors of Christ (2 Cor 5:20). We are to continue the ministry and mission of Jesus. In Luke 10:1, we read “the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go”. Whenever we preach the Good News to someone, we are continuing the Ascension experience that disciples had two thousand years ago and is making Jesus manifest in this world. Remember that “we are the aroma of Christ” (2 Cor 2:15).

 They will cast out demons, they will pick up snakes, and if they drink anything poisonous they will be unharmed, they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will be healed” (Mk 16:17,18). As Christians who are sent out to represent Jesus in this world, we are given the share of his power too and are offered victory over demons, sickness, and harmful objects and so on. We must live in this awareness that we are given the victory by the Lord already. We are a victorious people.

 “The Eleven went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the wonders that accompanied it” (Mk 16:20).Wherever disciples preached the Good News, there were miracles too. By a word Peter cured the crippled beggar who was at the gate of the Temple (Act 3:1-10). But always remember that these wonders happened in the life of the disciples only after they started to preach the Good News. We too will be able to perform miracles if we begin to preach, not any time before that. Therefore, start to Act Now.

 The Feast of Ascension of our Lord is giving us the responsibility of representing Jesus in this world. Let us ask ourselves whether, in this life, have given Jesus to at least one person who was ignorant of Jesus; may be a shop keeper, or a car driver, or our co-worker in the office, or may be a student in our class. Let us be ‘proud of being a Christ-ian.

 Let’s make Jesus Christ visible in this world!