Connections&  
May 27--The Ascension of the Lord

• "... you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
  

• "You are witnesses of these things.  And behold I am sending the promise of my father upon you... "
  

The accidental Catholic
     The great actor, Sir Alec Guinness, often told this story to explain what led him to become a Catholic so late in his life.
     In his 1955 film The Prisoner , filmed in France, Guinness played a Roman Catholic cardinal imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain.  During a break in the filming one evening, he went for a walk along a village street, still wearing his character's black cassock.  As he strolled, a little boy he had never seen before sidled up to him and silently took his hand.  They walked along in silence, and in the dark.  Guinness said nothing, afraid to speak for fear of frightening the boy with his strange English tones.  Once the two got to where the boy wanted to be, the boy ran off.  Guinness said this incident suggested to him that there must be something justly sacred and lasting about such a Church where there could be such silent but powerful trust between an elder and a child.  He added that the walk with the boy wasn't why he became a Catholic; it simply got his attention.

CONNECTION:  Before returning to the Father, the Risen Jesus calls his new Church to be "witnesses" of his life, death and resurrection.  We are witnesses not only in our articulating the powerful words of the Gospel but in the quiet, simple, but no-less powerful expressions of compassion and love that echo the same compassion and love of God--God who is Father and Son and Brother and Sister to us all.  May the work and life of the Risen and now ascended Jesus live on in us, we who are the Church he leaves behind.