Ascension of the Lord 2015
I don’t know about you, but when I read, or hear read,
some of the more fantastic Bible stories, I find myself trying to rationalise
them so as to make them more reasonable, or thinking of them as stories whose
details are unimportant but whose message remains salutary. The Ascension, which we celebrate today and
which is recounted for us in the first reading, is one of them. Years ago, I couldn’t help but think of the
chapel of the Ascension at Walsingham, which tastelessly featured Jesus’ feet
sticking out of the ceiling – how it was ever thought that such an image might
nurture people’s faith I can’t imagine.
In the story, which St Luke relates to us in the Acts of
the Apostles, we’re told that Jesus took his leave of the apostles, having
instructed them to wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost,
which we celebrate next Sunday. The
Spirit would empower them for the mission which they were to take over from him
and which he had entrusted to them. It’s
so easy to get bogged down in the details of the ascension account itself, and
find ourselves rather nonplussed by it.
And when we do this, we easily miss the message of the event
and the feast.
The ascension is a major feast of the Church and has
attracted the attention of many theologians and Christian thinkers down the
centuries. It’s an article of faith in
the creeds and, of course, rooted in scripture.
In a famous homily written way back in the fifth century, St Leo the Great
speaks about the period between the resurrection and the ascension as a time
which points to the truths that were revealed by God in Christ. He says, for
example, that it was during this period that the fear of death was taken away
from Jesus’ followers, since they had seen him in his risen life. It was during this period that Jesus
established the apostles in their leadership roles and entrusted the keys of
the kingdom to Peter.
Again, it was during this time that the risen Lord joined
two of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, rebuking them for their timidity
and lack of faith and fearful hesitation, before disclosing to them the truth
about himself. St Leo says that ‘their
enlightened hearts received the flame of faith; cool before’, he goes on, ‘they
glowed when the Lord unfolded the scriptures to them’. And, ‘as they ate with
him, their eyes were opened in the breaking of the bread’.
So, God used these days between the resurrection and the
ascension to teach the followers of Christ that the Lord Jesus, who was truly
born, truly suffered and truly died, should be recognised as truly risen. And this is why the Easter season is regarded
with the significance and importance it is – it is truly the heart of the
Christian Year. We are given a
concentrated period of 50 days to celebrate that Christ has triumphed over all
that is at enmity with him – all sin, suffering and death; and in addition, every Sunday is to be understood as a
celebration of the resurrection; this, in turn, is why Sunday has the
importance it has, and why we need to recover this sense today.
St Leo reminds us that ‘all the disciples had been filled
with fear by [Jesus’] death on the cross, and [that] their faith in the
resurrection had been hesitant; but [that] now
they gained such strength from seeing the truth, that
when the Lord Jesus went up to heaven, far from feeling sadness, they
experienced a great joy’.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the disciples perceived what has
been articulated by theologians ever since, namely, that at the ascension,
human nature itself was exalted above the dignity of all the ranks of heaven,
that it would truly be admitted to the Father’s eternity in all its fullness.
We can see, too, if we look, that what we celebrate today
correlates with what we celebrate at the Annunciation and at Christmas – there,
we celebrate the taking of human nature by God in the virgin mother’s womb;
here, we celebrate the taking of our nature into the life of God. Or, to put it another way: God shares our
human life so that we might share his divine life – the marvellous exchange
which lies at the heart of our faith.
However we choose to think of the ascension, what we can
be certain about is that there is no unbridgeable gulf between God and
human-beings; any perceived gap has been bridged, and definitively closed by
Christ. And, in turn, this means that
there is no person who lies outside the scope of God’s saving grace. It means that we cannot, as it were, ‘bring
God into’ a discussion or a situation, precisely because he is already there.
And it means that there is no necessary distinction between the sacred and the
secular when we talk about the world.
There is only one world, and it is the world brought into being by
God. It means that human nature is
inherently conducive to God and his grace.
Of course, there are many who reject this and who resist divine grace;
but we might reasonably say that they are acting against their nature, which is
why they can never find a lasting and genuine fulfilment and why they are
likely to look for fulfilment in the wrong places. Of course, we are all prone to this error
whenever we act against our nature and forget the God who made us.
After the ascension, the apostles and Our Lady waited in
prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so that they could live and
witness in the power of the divine life that gift would bring to them.
They were able to go out and bring people everywhere to faith. We have received the same gift and, when we
celebrate Pentecost next Sunday, we have an opportunity to consider afresh the
nature of this gift and the capacities it bestows upon us. For, following the Lord’s ascension, his
active work in the world and his message of redemption falls upon his followers
in each place and time. It is now our time, and we have been set where we
are to be his witnesses. We have been
given all the resources we need to ‘proclaim the Good News to all creation’.
