The readings today could be from the 7th Sunday of Easter or from Ascension. In most of the United States, where holy days and civil holidays seldom are the same, Ascension Thursday has become Ascension Sunday. Today’s reflection focuses on what the Ascension means.
For most of my life, Ascension has meant the Great Commission, “Go unto all nations….” or the beginning of serious prayer for new, powerful empowerments of the Holy Spirit. It has been a day I did not fully understand or appreciate.
I participated in a study of Bishop Barron’s Creed recently, and am now reading a book on the Desert Mothers and Fathers of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. Bishop Barron helped me understand the importance of the Nicene Creed and the struggles of the developing church of those centuries around the nature of Christ.
I have pretty much always, until now, simply accepted “true God and true man” as what I was taught and therefore what I believe.
But it was not so simple centuries ago. It was the issue of “true God and true man” that sent many to become hermits, not just after the Council of Nicea (325), but also the First Council of Constantinople (381), the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Council of Chalcedon (451). Many people went to the desert as hermits because they found it so hard to remain a part of the active church when it said, “true God and true man.” They favored one side or the other.
Different? or Same?
And, honestly, when I look at polarities within the church today, I wonder—are we still divided? Do we still not grasp that Jesus who is God, is also God who is human Jesus—that what Jesus said and did was BOTH God demonstrating his divinity AND man demonstrating HOW to live the way God wants us to live. Jesus, who was God and man, followed the laws of his Jewish faith. Jesus, who was man and God, healed, cast out demons, taught with authority, and equipped the called, rather than called the equipped.
Do we worship Jesus in his glory—or do we imitate Jesus in the way he lived?
This year I have come to better understand that Jesus’ Ascension calls us to do both. This week two selections from Vigils in the Liturgy of the Hours by St. Leo the Great said it well for me. St. Leo was present at the Council of Chalcedon. I pass his reasoning on to you as the rest of today’s reflection for Ascension.
St. Leo Speaks: Recalling the Effects of the Forty Post-Resurrection Days
“Beloved, the days which passed between the Lord’s resurrection and his ascension were by no means uneventful…In those days the fear of death with all its horrors was taken away, and the immortality of both body and soul affirmed. It was then that the Lord breathed on all his apostles and filled them with the Holy Spirit; and after giving the keys of the kingdom to blessed Peter, whom he had chosen and set above all the others, he entrusted him with the care of his flock.
The Lesson of the Forty Days
“Throughout the whole period between the resurrection and ascension, God’s providence was at work to instill this one lesson into the hearts of the disciples, to set this one truth before their eyes, that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was truly born, truly suffered and truly died, should be recognized as truly risen from the dead.
The blessed apostles together with all the others had been intimidated by the catastrophe of the cross, and their faith in the resurrection had been uncertain; but now they were so strengthened by the evident truth that when their Lord ascended into heaven, far from feeling any sadness, they were filled with great joy.
Indeed, that blessed company had a great and inexpressible cause for joy when it saw man’s nature rising above the dignity of the whole heavenly creation, above the ranks of angels, above the exalted status of archangels. Nor would there be any limit to its upward course until humanity was admitted to a seat at the right hand of the eternal Father, to be enthroned at last in the glory of him to whose nature it was wedded in the person of the Son.
The Lesson of the Ascension: The Gift of Faith
At Easter, beloved brethren, it was the Lord’s resurrection which was the cause of our joy; our present rejoicing is on account of his ascension into heaven. With all due solemnity we are commemorating that day on which our poor human nature was carried up, in Christ, above all the hosts of heaven, above all the ranks of angels, beyond the highest heavenly powers to the very throne of God the Father…
For such is the power of great minds, such the light of truly believing souls, that they put unhesitating faith in what is not seen with the bodily eye; they fix their desires on what is beyond sight. Such fidelity could never be born in our hearts, nor could anyone be satisfied by faith if our salvation lay only in what was visible.
Jesus: Present with Us in Sacraments and Prayer
And so our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments. Our faith is nobler and stronger because sight has been replaced by a doctrine whose authority is accepted by believing hearts, enlightened from on high. This faith was increased by the Lord’s ascension and strengthened by the gift of the Spirit; it would remain unshaken by fetters and imprisonment, exile and hunger, fire and ravening beasts, and the most refined tortures ever devised by brutal persecutors. Throughout the world women no less than men, tender girls as well as boys, have given their life’s blood in the struggle for this faith. It is a faith that has driven out devils, healed the sick and raised the dead.
Even the blessed apostles, though they had been strengthened by so many miracles and instructed by so much teaching, took fright at the cruel suffering of the Lord’s passion and could not accept his resurrection without hesitation. Yet they made such progress through his ascension that they now found joy in what had terrified them before. They were able to fix their minds on Christ’s divinity as he sat at the right hand of his Father, since what was presented to their bodily eyes no longer hindered them from turning all their attention to the realization that he had not left his Father when he came down to earth, nor had he abandoned his disciples when he ascended into heaven.
The truth is that the Son of Man was revealed as Son of God in a more perfect and transcendent way once he had entered into his Father’s glory; he now began to be indescribably more present in his divinity to those from whom he was further removed in his humanity. A more mature faith enabled their minds to stretch upward to the Son in his equality with the Father; it no longer needed contact with Christ’s tangible body, in which as man he is inferior to the Father. For while his glorified body retained the same nature, the faith of those who believed in him was now summoned to heights, where, as the Father’s equal, the only-begotten Son is reached not by physical handling but by spiritual discernment.
Prayer
What a blessing to have the gift of faith! What a blessing to have You, Lord, just as present to me in Frankfort, Kentucky as you are present in EVERY corner of the world. You share Your life with me as You share it with each person who reads this prayer. YOU ARE WITH US NOW and forever in every mass, every sacrament. Lord, help the 100% human me follow You—in how you lived, what you taught, and, eventually, in how you live in the Light of the Father’s Glory.
