Christ's Ascension
Traditionally
the Feast of the Ascension was celebrated on the Thursday, but in order for
more people to participate, the dioceses now have the option of celebrating the
following Sunday, which we do on the West Coast and so will celebrate this
Sunday, May 24th.
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church is located in California City, CA. Visit our website at ollcalcity.org.
Today, May 21st,
is 40 days since Easter. 40 days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead, He lead His disciples to Bethany, on the Mount of Olives near
Jerusalem, and there He “was taken up into heaven and took His seat at the
right hand of God” (Mk 16:19). St. Luke says that Jesus “parted from them and
was carried up into heaven” (Lk 24:51), that “He was lifted up, and a cloud
took Him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). Recall that the first thing Jesus said
to Mary Magdalene Easter morning was not to cling to Him because He had not yet
ascended, and to go tell His brethren that He will be ascending (Jn 20:17).
Frank Sheed
in, To Know Christ Jesus, writes, “With the Resurrection God showed that he
had accepted the Sacrifice by glorifying the Victim [Jesus]. With the
Ascension, God showed that he had accepted the Victim. This was a new element.
In the symbol sacrifices of the Old Testament, there was no question of it.
What could God do with a roasted bull or a slaughtered goat? They were slain as a way of giving up men’s
own use of them.... Now for the first time a real, not a symbolic, offering was
made. The Priest [Jesus] had offered to God the Man that he himself was, the
flower and perfection of the race for whom he was offered. The Victim [Jesus]
was not only accepted, taken to himself by God, but, as the perfection of
sacrifice as a public act required, the acceptance was visibly expressed. That
is the point of the Ascension.”
And yet
there is more. Jesus’ death was not only to expiate sins but also to reconcile
sinful men to God and lift them into a new order of existence, as dramatized in
the Ascension and symbolized by the cloud. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in
Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, says the
cloud at the ascension “presents Jesus’ departure, not as a journey to the
stars, but as his entry into the mystery of God.... The New Testament ...
describes the ‘place’ to which the cloud took Jesus, in the language of Psalm
110:1, as sitting (or standing) at God’s right hand.” Pope Benedict says this is not a space
because God’s presence is not spatial but divine. “‘Sitting at God’s right hand’
means participating in [God’s] divine dominion over space.... Hence he has not
‘gone away,’ but now and forever by God’s own power he is present with us and
for us.”
And yet
there is more. The lifting of Jesus, and humanity, to a new order of existence
is more than just participating in God’s power. Fr. Romano Guardini, in The
Lord, says, “Heaven is the intimate
reserve of holy God, that what St. Paul calls the ‘light inaccessible.’” (I
Tim. 6:16.) What Fr. Guardini means by
this “intimate reserve” is analogous, he says, to the innermost self of every
person. Not the public self the world sees, but that inner being which no other
person can violate and that can only be opened by the person himself – and this
is what happens in love, the unfolding of self-disclosure. So Fr. Guardini says
that when it comes to God, this innermost self, this “intimate reserve,” of God
– is heaven. It is God’s love, expressed and shared. This is the destination of
the risen Lord Jesus in his ascension – this “intimate reserve” of God.
Similarly, redeemed humanity, by abiding in Jesus and as members of his Body,
now also may participate in this power, this presence, this “intimate reserve,”
this Love of God. As St. Peter says, we are made partakers of the Divine Nature
(2 Pet 1:4).
To say all the above
much more simply, in His ascension into heaven, Jesus took His resurrected human
flesh into the heart of God, thus making it possible for us to go there too. Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church is located in California City, CA. Visit our website at ollcalcity.org.