Sunday after the Ascension 2025 Sermon
Church of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
La Crosse, Wisconsin
1 June 2025
1 Peter 4, 7-11
John 15, 26-27. 16, 1-4
Sermon
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Today, we continue to rejoice in the mystery of the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ: the mystery of the enthronement of our human nature, united to the divine nature of God the Son, at the right hand of God the Father. God the Son humbled Himself to take our human nature. God the Son Incarnate suffered the cruelest Passion and Death, to save us from sin and everlasting death, winning for us the home for which God the Father had destined us from the beginning: Heaven where in the company of the angels and all the saints we shall forever praise and glorify the Most Holy Trinity: God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son and the Son of Man, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father never ceases to pour out His love upon us from His glorious-pierced Heart, that we, uniting ourselves to Him in the mystery of His Suffering and Death – uniting our hearts to His Most Sacred Heart – , may likewise share in the mystery of His glory, the mystery of the Ascension. On this first day of June, the month dedicated to devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, let us begin a daily effort to draw more closely in heart to Jesus, Our Lord and Our Savior.
Beginning on the Feast of the Ascension, we, in imitation of the Apostles, “together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brethren,”[1] have been making a novena of prayer – the first novena – for an abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit into our hearts at the conclusion of the novena on Pentecost Sunday. In obedience to the command of our Risen Lord, we are awaiting “the promise of the Father,”[2] the Pentecost Descent of the Holy Spirit with his sevenfold gift by which our hearts are cleansed of sin and are enflamed with Divine Truth and Love.
Saint Peter, the visible Head of the Apostles gathered in the Upper Room to await the Descent of the Holy Spirit, teaches us, in today’s Epistle, how to prepare ourselves for the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit: “As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace; whoever speaks, as one who utters oracles of God; whoever renders service, as one who renders it by the strength which God supplies; in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”[3] Commenting on today’s Epistle, Dom Prosper Guéranger counsels us:
During these days of our preparing to receive the promised Comforter, the apostle bids us be prudent and watch in prayers. Let us follow his instruction; we must show our prudence by excluding everything that might be an obstacle to the Holy Ghost’s entering our hearts; and as to prayer, it is the means which will open our hearts to Him, that He may make them His own for ever.[4]
Practicing prudence and praying fervently, we will “hold unfailing [our] love for one another,”[5] as Saint Peter urges us.
Our life is in Christ Who suffered and died on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Father precisely to give us His very life, the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts. We share in the mystery of His life, the glory of His Resurrection and Ascension but also the suffering and dying which are the only way to His glory, to eternal life. Thus, the joy of today’s celebration is necessarily marked by the sober realization of all that it means to live in Christ, to speak and to render service to others in Christ for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. In today’s Gospel, taken from the discourse of Our Lord to the Apostles at the Last Supper, Our Lord made clear the demands of following Him. He told the Apostles:
I have said all this to you to keep you from falling way. They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God…. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you of them.[6]
Our joy today remains undiminished by the knowledge of the suffering which living in Divine Love necessarily entails. It is, in fact, confirmed and deepened by that knowledge, by that experience, for the dwelling of the Holy Spirit in our hearts surely conquers sin and death, unfailingly sustains along the way of life, the way whose destination is eternal life.
Dom Prosper Guéranger comments on today’s Gospel:
As soon as this holy season of Easter is over, and we no longer have the celebration of its mysteries to enlighten and cheer us, we shall find ourselves at the old work of battling with the three enemies; the devil, who is angered by the graces we have received; the world, to which we must unfortunately return; and our passions, which, after this calm, will again awaken, and molest us. If we be “endued with the power from on high”, we shall have nothing to fear. Let us, therefore, ardently desire to receive Him; let us prepare Him a worthy reception; let us use every endeavour to make Him abide with us; and we shall gain the victory, as did the apostles.[7]
May these days of our Pentecost Novena dispose our hearts ever more to receive the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. May Christ the King rule in our hearts from His glorious-pierced Heart. Thus, may we be fortified to suffer and die joyfully in Christ, confident of the victory of His Resurrection and Ascension in our lives.
I greet with special affection today those present and those join us by the communications media who are engaged in Operation Storm Heaven, the spiritual work of praying the Rosary daily for the great needs of the Church and of the world in our time. I urge you, beloved “Rosary Warriors” to take heart from today’s celebration of the mystery of the Ascension and from our Pentecost Novena, even as you take heart from your daily meditation on the mysteries of the life of Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother, as you pray the Holy Rosary. Our Lord will not fail to hear our prayer made through the intercession of His Virgin Mother. He will come to our aid in these most troubled times with the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit. Christ will win in us, in our human nature, the victory over sin and death, the victory of eternal life.
Christ will now descend from His place in glory at the right hand of God the Father to make sacramentally present His sacrifice on Calvary and to nourish the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit within us with the Heavenly Bread which is truly His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Let us pray for the grace of knowing and living always the profound truth of our being as true sons and daughters of God the Father in God the Son through the Indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in our souls.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
[1] Acts 1, 14.
[2] Acts 1, 4.
[3] 1 Pet 4, 10-11.
[4] “En attendant la descente du Consolateur promis, l’Apôtre nous dit que nous devons être prudents et veiller dans la prière. Recevons la leçon: la prudence consistera à écarter de nos cœurs tout obstacle qui repousserait le divin Esprit ; quanta la prière, c’est elle qui les ouvrira, afin qu’il les reconnaisse et s’y établisse.” Prosper Guéranger, L’Année liturgique, Le temps pascal, Tome III, 12ème éd. (Paris: H. Oudin, Éditeur, 1902), p. 192. [Guéranger]. English translation: Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, Paschal Time, Book III, tr. Laurence Shepherd (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2000), p. 213. [GuérangerEng].
[5] 1 Pet 4, 8.
[6] Jn 16, 1-2, 4.
[7] “Au sortir de la Saison pascale, où les plus augustes mystères nous illuminent et nous protègent, nous allons retrouver en face le démon irrité, le monde qui nous attendait, nos passions calmées un moment qui voudront se réveiller. Si nous sommes « revêtus de la Vertu d’en haut », nous n’aurons rien à craindre ; aspirons donc à la venue du céleste Consolateur, préparons-lui en nous une réception digne de sa majesté ; quand nous l’aurons reçu, gardons-le chèrement ; il nous assurera la victoire, comme il l’assura aux Apôtres.” Guéranger, p. 194. English translation: GuérangerEng, p. 215.