Ascension: worth doing badly

Chesterton said, "If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

I think of his proverb today on the Feast of Ascension because Jesus trusted his apostles - one of whom betrayed him, another who denied him, and the rest who abandoned him - to continue His ministry of the forgiveness of sins and proclamation of the kingdom. Humanly speaking, the apostles were failures, as was Christ, nailed upon the cross, symbol of Roman oppression, power and terror. Dead meat slung upon a cross.

But in the greatest reversal of human history, Christ trumped death and called his disciples back together - to try again. This time He sent the promised Holy Spirit to help them. And what started out badly moved forward boldly, in fits and starts. This paschal process of suffering - death - exaltation verifies Chesterton's maxim and punches the air out of perfectionism:

"If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."