A few years ago, a rescue diver from the United States Navy made a sobering observation after years of pulling people from the water.  He said the most dangerous part, isn’t the instant someone first falls in. As terrifying as that is, people are resilient, and the survival instinct can be incredibly powerful and strong.  People will fight, kick and struggle to stay afloat.  No – the most dangerous part comes later.  When exhaustion sets in.  When the shore seems to be moving father and father away.  When panic slowly gives way to discouragement.  And discouragement slips into resignation.  That’s when people stop struggling.

That is the most dangerous part.  Because that’s when people give up.

Thank you for taking the time to read this homily for THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD -MAY 17, 2026 – Your support means a great deal to me, and I’m deeply grateful for the many who share these messages with their friends, families and social media followers. If you’ve found meaning in these words, I’d be grateful if you’d share them with others who might benefit.

And for those who prefer listening, you can find the audio version on SoundCloud HERE or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes HERE. Your comments, messages, and the way you’ve embraced these homilies continue to inspire me.   Sincerely in Christ -Father Jim

Emotionally, mentally, spiritually how many of us know exactly what that feels like?  Marriage is tough.  Raising kids is even harder.  Life throws curveballs: devastating news, sudden losses, the slow erosion of health or security.  Just the other day, my mom had three phone calls in a row with heartbreaking news – a neighbor a young mother with 2 kids, diagnosed with colon cancer; her brother whose dementia has forced another move to a new assisted living center; and my godfather’s Parkinson’s getting  worse.

All of it can just be exhausting. And underneath the exhaustion, many of us carry something quieter but just as heavy: doubt.   Not the loud, angry kind.  Just the unspoken ache where the doubt starts to feel louder than faith.

That’s why this one line of the Gospel today jumps off the page for me.  “When they saw Him, they worshiped… but they doubted.”  Think about who “they” are.  These are the eleven apostles on the mountain in Galilee on the day we call the Ascension of the Lord.  For 7 beautiful weeks as we’ve journeyed through Easter, we’ve celebrated Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the empty tomb, the appearances, the joy.  And 40 days later, Jesus fully alive in His glorious, resurrected body gathers them one last time.  He blesses them.  He speaks of the Kingdom.  And then before their very eyes, He is lifted and taken from their sight.  And the Gospel fills the space that follows with that line of what happened next: They worshiped, but they doubted. 

Worshiped and doubted.  Think about that for a second.  These guys had left their nets, the tax booth, their families.  They saw water turned to wine; thousands fed on five loaves and two fish, the-dead-for-four-days Lazarus step out of the tomb at the voice of Jesus.  They ate the Last Supper with Him, witnessed and experienced the arrest and horrors of the Passion, Crucifixion and death of Jesus – and then – astonishingly had Him enter into their locked upper room, ate breakfast with the Risen Lord… They touched His wounds.  They listened to Him teach over the 40 days of Easter – and now after all that…

They worshiped… but they doubted. 

Honestly, I find that strangely comforting.  Because we often think doubt is something that belongs to us.  Thousands of years removed from the events… convinced that if I had only been there, I wouldn’t doubt.  But the apostles were there.  And still they wrestled.

Remember the two on the road to Emmaus? – The two disciples who heard the news of the resurrection but are hightailing it out of Jerusalem walking seven miles, so weighed down with heavy hearts, they don’t recognize at first that it’s Jesus Himself they confess their doubts to as they explain “we had hoped…”  Or poor St. Thomas forever nicknamed “doubing” because he missed the first appearance of the Risen Christ and said he needed proof.

Easter did not magically erase their questions.  It invited them to face them – honestly.

And maybe that is one of the quiet gifts of the entire Easter Season: we don’t have to pretend that we don’t have doubts.  We’re being invited to bring them to Jesus instead of hiding them.

Pope Benedict XVI knew this better than most.  Early in his priesthood, when he was still in his forties, he wrote this book entitled Introduction to Christianity.  Right at the beginning he says something that probably is striking to non-Christians.  That every believer experiences moments where the certainty of faith suddenly feels fragile.  And then he points out that even the greatest and most beloved of Saints, like St. Therese of Lisieux – whose writings reveal a soul that was in this constant intense intimacy with Jesus – sometimes felt the dark night of atheism pressing in on her.  Her own sisters were so shocked when they read those things in her journals after she died, that initially they hid those parts out.

But the life of faith, the life of the Christian isn’t about certainty or perfection.

          Doubt is not the opposite of faith… Giving up is.  

Faith is often the decision to hold on even while questions remain unanswered.

Pope Benedict continued by telling a story from a play called The Satin Slipper.  In the scene he shares, a Jesuit missionary is shipwrecked by pirates and left clinging to a single wooden plank, drifting alone in the middle of a raging ocean.  All around him is chaos.  Waves, darkness, the abyss.  All of it is screaming “let go – you’re going under…”  But the priest grips that plank with everything he has.   Because he knows: that piece of wood is strong enough to hold him.  It will carry him to safety.

That plank of wood is the wood of the Cross.  On Good Friday it looked like failure, that evil had won, that hope was gone.  But Easter revealed the truth – something that most of the world didn’t expect.  God was still at work – even there.  And every day since, the waves of our world try to convince us to let go.   Sickness – brokenness – loneliness – depression – financial pressure – fears about the future – a world that seems to feel angrier, more divided and unsteady…  Those waves are ferocious and intense.  And in those moments its easy to stare out into the abyss around us instead of the wood that’s holding us up.  But the Christian knows something the world doesn’t the Cross still floats… Jesus Christ still holds us.

Look at that first reading we heard today from the Acts of the Apostles.  Even at the very moment of the Ascension, St. Luke gives us some other details.  The Apostles ask “Lord is this the time you will restore Israel?”  It’s almost hysterical.  After everything they’ve seen and experienced they’re thinking – okay that was great Jesus – so anyway are you NOW going to conquer Rome, get even with the Jewish leaders who’ve committed the ultimate of blasphemies in blaspheming and arranging for the crucifixion of the Son of God…  They’re thinking in worldly terms and they still want God to work according to their expectations.  Their vision was still too small, too earthbound.

So is ours, sometimes.  We want immediate fixes, immediate answers, immediate healing, immediate justice, immediate clarity.  But Jesus keeps lifting our eyes higher.  The Kingdom of God is bigger than Rome.  Bigger than politics.  Bigger than our plans.   Bigger than our pain.

The Ascension of the Lord is not a farewell.  It is not abandonment.  The Ascension of Christ opens Heaven itself to Humanity.  Human flesh now sits at the right hand of the Father.  Which means our destiny is no longer confined to this world.

And before Jesus ascends, He makes one final promise: Behold I am with you always, until the end of the age

Not – I’ll be with you when life makes sense.  Not – I’ll be with you when your doubts disappear.  Not I’ll be with you when you become perfect.  I am with you always.  In the storm.  In the In the waiting.  In the exhaustion.  In the questions.  Always.

The question is what are we clinging to right now?  In the middle of the storm – when the waves are crashing over your head, when the salt burns your eyes and your arms scream with exhaustion and the wind howls and doubt whispers, “Let go… you’re going under.”  What are you holding onto?

Cling to the Cross of Jesus.  Cling to that blood-stained beam that has already smashed through the gates of death itself.  Cling to the only wood in the universe powerful enough to carry you safely to your eterna home.  The One who was lifted up before the apostle’s wondering eyes is not far away or distant.

He is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He is reigning above every wave, above every storm – and from that throne He looks straight into your eyes and thunders… Behold I am with you always – until the end of the age.  So don’t let go.

Hold on with every last ounce of strength you have.  Fight the exhaustion.  Refuse the whisper Because you are not sinking.  You are being carried.   You are going to break through the surface and reach the shore.  The same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead and who comes in fire at Pentecost is already burning inside of us.  Let the doubts come—they did for the apostles, for Thérèse, for Benedict, for all the saints. But they refused to let them win… They were people who kept clinging to Jesus in the middle of the waves.

And that – that – is enough to carry us all to our eternal home.