Ascension

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux described the Ascension as “the consummation and fulfillment of all other festivals, and a happy ending to the whole journey of the Son of God.” Our belief in the Ascension is, of course, one of the key components of the Creed, which we recite regularly . After professing our faith in Jesus’ resurrection, we add: he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

As the words of the Creed suggest, the ascension actually involves several things. Historically speaking, it has to do with the fact that the Risen Christ was no longer living among his disciples as he had been before. The Risen Lord lives already the new life of the future of which his resurrection is a foretaste for us. The New Testament authors assure us that the Risen One presented himself alive to his disciples, appearing to them and speaking about the kingdom of God. After a certain period, those appearances ended. It was time to move on to the next stage in salvation history – our time, the time of the Church.  Historically, therefore, the Ascension refers to the end of the period of the Risen Christ’s appearances to his disciples.

That being the case, the question then becomes: well, where exactly is he? Again, the Creed contains the answer: he is seated at the right hand of the Father. Of course, as Son of God, the Divine Word, has always been with the Father. Theologically speaking, what the Ascension celebrates is that the Word-made-flesh, the incarnate Christ is now with God his Father, the fact that his human body (and thus our shared human nature) that is with God.

In Jerusalem, in the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, pilgrims get to see a footprint-like depression in the rock, which purports to be the exact spot from which the Risen Lord ascended to heaven. The footprint may well be fanciful, but it does highlight the point that it was Jesus’ human body (and thus our shared human nature) that ascended and so is now with God.

As St. Augustine famously said in one of his sermons: “Although he descended without a body, he ascended with a body and with us, who are destined to ascend, not by reason of our own virtue but on account of our oneness with him” (Sermon 263).

Thus, the Ascension anticipates what the resurrection has made it possible for us all to hope for. In the words of the liturgy: where he has gone, we hope to follow.

In the meantime now - in this interim between Easter and the end - though he is absent, he has promised to remain present: behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.

Hence, his instruction to his disciples: to wait for the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father. This Jesus, who lived and died and now lives again forever with his Father, far from being absent, is still present among us by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church and its sacraments. Hence the intense focus of this final part of the Easter season on his parting gift of the Holy Spirit to us in his church. Meanwhile, not only does the Risen Christ continue present in the Church through the gift of the Holy Spirit; but, through the sacraments and in particular the Eucharist, we participate already even now in the heavenly liturgy, where Christ, as our High Priest intercedes forever on our behalf with his Father.

Our confidence in his heavenly intercession a simultaneously continuing presence among us in his Church should encourage us as we make our way through our daily difficulties and the seemingly overwhelming crises and calamities the world keeps throwing at us.

Homily for the Ascension of the Lord, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, May 24, 2020. The entire Mass may be viewed on the Immaculate Conception Church Facebook Page and later on the parish website icknoxville.org.

Photo: Watercolor Ceiling Painting of the Ascension, 1913, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN