Ascension of the Lord
The Lord lives in the Church
He said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents (with their hands), and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs. Mk 16,15-20
“They went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs”. These actions of the Lord to confirm the words of the announcer of the gospel are true and real miracles. Sometimes these are spiritual healings, some other times these are the curing of messy situations which only the Lord can fix, others are physical healings. Since twenty years, when we go to visit the prayer group of Bergamo, which is particularly dear to us, Mrs. Antoinette at the end always insists to offer us a lunch in his beautiful restaurant, located in the upper part of the city. Although the one who has operated was just the Lord, Antoinette does it to thank us of one of these signs mentioned above. Of course, she never said the reason why she does it, but each time it is evident as it would be written in the air.
In the late eighties, Antoinette asked us to pray for her son and his wife, who were heartbroken because, although they spent several years of marriage, they were still expecting their first child. We met with that couple, we spoke of the Lord, we prayed together and at the end the Holy Spirit allowed us to understand so clearly that he had removed the impediments of the pregnancy, causing me to exclaim: “Next year at this time you will have a son”. And so it happened.
These events happen also today because the Lord has ascended to the Father. He is not in any particular place, but in a new dimension, where we are also expected, from which he can operate throughout the world to confirm the message of the gospel: “The Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs”. This new presence of the Lord in the world and the church is even more important than the first one, when he was physically present and he walked the streets of the Palestine. He knew that certain signs had to occur, so much so that about the end of his earthly life, he has repeatedly announced to the Apostles: “It is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you” (Jn 16,7). One day, at the end of one of these assertions, he also said: “Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete” (Jn 16,24). Now he, in his new dimension of the Son of God, can operate in any place where the gospel is witnessed, confirming with the signs the announced Word. We just have to believe it.