Ascension Thursday

 

Alternate-Side-of-the-Street Parking Regulations are suspended in New York City today in observance of Ascension Thursday.

I always love hearing that every year on this holy day! If notign else it shoudl serve as a reminder to take this hoy day much more seriously!

One advantage of being old is what one remembers from the past. For example, I am old enough to remember when, immediately after the Gospel on Ascension Thursday, the Easter Candle – our very visible symbol of the unique presence of the Risen Christ – was ceremonially extinguished, and then disappeared from the sanctuary. Even more dramatically, in certain places, the Easter Candle might be hoisted up into the Church’s roof until it disappeared. [For a video of this custom carried out at the Duomo in Milan in 2019, go to https://youtu.be/D277FhicPYs at about 22:30] In some places, when this was done in the past, the people would stand and stretch out their arms, while a shower of roses would recall Christ’s parting promise to send the Holy Spirit to his Church.

(Of course, my memory of the past is embellished by knowledge of what was supposed to be done and was in fact done in many places. In my own home parish, minimalism reigned. The Easter candle would be lit on Easter Sunday and then barely seen again until it wa slit - in order to be extinguished - on Ascension!)

Such quaint customs recall those familiar pictures of the Ascension that show the disciples staring up at an empty space – sometimes with two feet sticking out from a cloud (with holes in them, just to make sure we know who it is that is missing!) The point, of course, of all such customs and practices is to highlight that Jesus has now (in some sense) moved on, and that we are now (in some sense) left behind. 

What exactly does it mean for us to be supposedly left behind? Does it mean that we have been left alone?

Historically speaking, what the Ascension commemorates is the end of that short period - Luke in today's familiar first reading quantifies it as 40 days [Acts 1:3] - when the Risen Christ appeared several times to his disciples after the resurrection. After that, those appearances ended. And the disciples were left behind to do the work the Risen Lord had given them to do. 

Left behind, but not quite alone, since Christ continues in his Church through his gift of the Holy Spirit. “I am sending the promise of my Father upon you,” the departing Jesus said to his disciples in today's gospel reading, “so stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high [Luke 24:49]. So, Jesus may be gone, but he is still with us in a very real way. Reflecting on this continued presence, Pope Benedict XVI wrote: "'Ascension' does not mean departure into a remote region of the cosmos but, rather, the continuing closeness that the disciples experience so strongly that it becomes a source of lasting joy."

Meanwhile, the Ascension highlights for us that Jesus is now, as we say week after week, seated at the right had of the Father. Thus, just as he is still really with us here, through the gift of the Holy Spirit and in the sacraments we celebrate, so we too are also in some sense with him there. So we pray in today’s Mass, we celebrate the most sacred day on which your Only begotten Son, our Lord, placed at the right hand of your glory our weak human nature, which he had united to himself. In having his Son’s humanity enthroned at his side in heaven, God now has at his side in a sense the whole human world, which his Son embraced in himself and experienced to the full. And so now, having experienced our world with us (and in the process having invested it with more meaning that it would ever otherwise have had), God in turn now shares his world with us. For where Christ has gone, there we hope to follow. Where he is now, there we hope to be.

As Saint Augustine said. in his 'Ascension sermon: Out of compassion for us he descended from heaven, and although he ascended alone, we also ascend, because we ar ei nhim by grace. Thus the Ascension is also about us, as well as about Jesus – not just about our being left behind, but about what is now in store for us thanks to Jesus’ resurrection, and about what goes on in the meantime. The Ascension sets the stage for that hoped-for future, which we get a glimpse of already in the present in Jesus, who, although ascended, still invites us to approach him even now – as today's epistle reading says with a sincere heart and in absolute trust [Hebrews 10:22].