To believe is to see

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THROUGH UNTRUE

By FR. ROLANDO DELA ROSA, OP

Fr. Rolando V. Dela Rosa, OP

“I was up there (in outer space), I looked around, and I did not see God.” For a long time, this statement was attributed to Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968), the Russian cosmonaut who was the first man to orbit the earth. Since Gagarin was a devout Orthodox Catholic, people who knew him could not believe that he uttered those words.

Actually, it was a misquote. Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), former prime minister of the Soviet Union, put those words in Gagarin’s mouth when he declared during a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union: “Yuri Gagarin flew into space and he said he didn’t see God there.” Khrushchev thought he had disproven God’s existence with that statement.

For me, whether or not Gagarin saw God in outer space does not prove or disprove that God exists. The God “up there” is a relic of an outmoded religious symbolism that depicts God as residing in the sky or in a localized heaven.

Perhaps, the gospel account of the Ascension somehow inspires such symbolism. It describes Jesus as being “lifted up” or “taken up to heaven” (Luke 24:50-51), as though He was rocketed into outer space and now permanently lives there. This is why many Filipinos say: “Bahala na ang nasa itaas.”

Writers of the gospels lived with the idea of a tripartite universe -- heaven above, earth in the middle, and hell below. They thus explained what happened to Jesus within such a cosmological framework. Today we need not understand the Ascension in that way.

Ascension means that Jesus assumed a new kind of presence, thereby transcending the spatial and temporal limitations imposed by his bodily existence. Henceforth, His presence is no longer chained to his visibility. The gospel narrative today describes the apostles as being “filled with joy” even when they no longer see Jesus because even if Jesus no longer walks, talks, and eats with them, they know by faith that He will always be IN them, BETWEEN them, and AMONG them.  They rely on Jesus’ assurance: “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

To understand how Jesus remains present to us after the Ascension, Paul Tillich rightly suggests that we think of Himnot only as someone “in the heights” or “in the heavens.” Jesus is in the depths of our being. More precisely, He is the ground of our being. St. Paul’s words are quite accurate: “I live now, not with my own life, but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

God, as the ground of our being implies our constant awareness that we can never isolate ourselves from God. We cannot escape Him, for we encounter Him at every turn.  As the poet e.e. cummings writes: “In His most frail gesture are things which enclosed me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near.”

In our audio-visual culture where reality is equated with what is visible, Ascension challenges us to see with the eyes of faith. To believe is to see reality in a new way. As Jesus transcends the limits of his physicality, He challenges us to go beyond the limits of our vision and discover the infinite possibilities that faith opens up for us. He empowers us to do this and to help others do the same: “All power in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).