What must those days have been like?— the days between the Ascension and Pentecost. It is hard to imagine the feeling of lose the Apostles and other disciples must have felt. We know that many drifted away. Disillusioned, they went back to their old life.
And yet, there were the few who had real faith; not faith as ascent to a list of beliefs, but faith in the sense of absolute trust in the words that Jesus spoke to them.
In today's gospel we hear the most outrageous claim in the gospel.
I have conquered the world
Jesus did not claim that he will conquer [future tense] it when he came back. Jesus claimed that he had [past tense] conquered it.
Some two thousand years later it is hard to see the signs of His having conquered the world. If we listen to the news and even some Christian preachers, you would think that this world is still firmly in the hands of Satan.
But here is where we must have faith. Faith reaches beyond the narrow spectrum of what the human eye can see and what the human ear can hear. Faith enables us to use our hearts to reach beyond sight and sound, and to trust that Jesus has, on the most real level of reality, already conquered the world.
If we look for them, we can in fact get glimpses of the victory. But we have to look for them.
With the Ascension Jesus did not simply go back to where He came from and leave them with nothing while they waited for the Spirit. He left them in a world that had been transformed,a world that He had already conquered.
As we start this week, let us believe the words of Jesus. Believe Him when he says, "I have conquered the world." And with the eyes of our hearts and souls we will see all around us the signs of the Victory that those without faith cannot see.
