We are grateful to our Chaplain, Fr Michael Lang of the London Oratory, for this further paper in our series of meditations to mark the Paschal Season this year. Please remember our Chaplains in your daily prayers.
THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD, along with his sitting at the right hand of the Father, is part of the Creed we profess every Sunday, and yet this truth of the faith does not seem to be fully appreciated even by practising Catholics. When we hear of the Paschal Mystery, which is at the heart of divine Revelation, we tend to think of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, and we may not even notice that that the Ascension is missing from this series. And yet, Christ’s redeeming work includes his blessed Passion, his Resurrection from the dead and his glorious Ascension into heaven, as we recall in the Roman Canon of the Mass, after the Consecration.
When our Lord was taking leave of the Apostles, he said to them: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Saint Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, records that then, “as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).
Examples of ascent (and descent) abound in the Bible. When the waters of the flood were pouring down, Noah’s ark of salvation rose and it was lifted up “high above the earth” (Gen 7:17). Moses went up the mountain where God dwells to receive his word (Ex 24:18). In Holy Scripture, mountains are often described as places where we can meet God. Hence the psalmist asks, “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” The answer: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart” (Ps 24:3-4).
On the hilltop of the Mount of Olives, to the East of the city of Jerusalem, Christ was lifted up. This physical ascent, real as it was, is the sign of a still greater mystery. Christ ascended into heavenly glory, to sits at God’s right hand (Ps 110:1,5). This expression “seated at the right hand of” the Father is figurative and not to be taken literally. God is Spirit, and has no body. The expression, which we also use in the Creed, indicates the divine glory and majesty into which the Eternal Son returned, and in which he shares forever.
But the Ascension brings something new: Christ enters into heavenly glory with his human nature. The Incarnation wasn’t just a temporary remedy; it doesn’t end with the Ascension, but Christ remains for ever divine and human. Thus humanity is brought to its true and happy end: communion with God, sharing in the divine life of the Blessed Trinity. Through his Ascension, Christ throws the gates of eternal life wide open, so that we can follow him into heaven. He takes his own human nature into heaven to prepare a place for us.
We now understand why the Saint Luke in his Gospel says that after the Ascension the disciples returned to Jerusalem “with great joy” (24:52). Their joy comes from the fact that what had happened was not a separation or a departure: Christ’s Ascension does not mean his leave of absence from the world (until his Second Coming at the end of time), but rather the new and definitive form of his divine presence in the power of the Holy Spirit.
And so the Ascension leads to Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit on the Apostles. It was to be up to them, the disciples emboldened by the power from above, to make this presence of Christ visible in this world by their witness, preaching and missionary zeal.
According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Ascension is the cause of an increase in all three supernatural virtues. It increases our faith, which is the “conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), because those who believe in Christ, but do not see him are truly blessed (see Jn 20:29). It increases our hope because our journey towards God advances by virtue of our Head’s entering into his Father’s realm. And it increases our charity because Christ’s ascension is the precondition for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Thus the love of God is “poured into our hearts” (Rom 5:5) and directs our hearts and minds towards “the things that are above” (Col 3:1).
It is by being witnesses of Christ in our daily lives, through faith, hope and charity, that we, the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church, become ready to follow our Head into his glorious Kingdom.
DOMINUS IN CÆLO, ALLELUIA! PARAVIT SEDEM SUAM, ALLELUIA!
(The picture shows the panel of the Ascension by the German painter, Han Süss von Kulmbach, 1513, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.)
Posts
