The Ascension Season – 40 Days of Faith, Hope, Love
[An earlier version of this homily was published here in 2008]
The post-Easter season leading up to Ascension Thursday is a time to celebrate the complementary virtues that are reconciled in the wholeness of the Divine Word.
There are many ways to speak of these complementary virtues: as knowledge and life represented by the Trees of Paradise, or as the serpent and the dove of Jesus’ admonition in the Gospel of Matthew 10:16. Their absence can also be seen in the Beast and Babylon of the Apocalypse of John.
But one of the most familiar ways to talk about these complementary virtues are as Faith and Hope, which were paired together by Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians (13:13) under divine Love, or agape.