Ascending Thoughts—Ramblings on the Ascension of our Lord

…He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father…

So goes the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

Florida Catholics, together with many other Catholics worldwide, celebrate today something that properly belongs this past Thursday, forty days after Easter Sunday held April 24. Confused? It’s okay to be confused.

The change and confusion is caused by good pastoral intentions. Although Thursday, June 2^nd, was the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord for the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church this year, for pastoral reasons the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops—together with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops who obtained permission from the Holy See—always transfers it to the Seventh Sunday of Easter in all Florida dioceses. That’s why this past Thursday—although in the Church Universal the Solemnity of the Ascension—was not observed as a holy day of obligation (even though some other United States Catholic provinces DID retain the Thursday observance).

This Christian celebration dates from early times. In the Latin West the title is Ascensio, which implies the Lord Rising under his own power. In the Greek East it is called “the taking up” (Analepsis) and “salvation from above” (Episozomene). This implies, wisely, that Eastern soteriology consistently recognized that about which Saint Paul wrote to the early Roman Church:

Romans 4:23-25—

But it was not for him alone that it was written that "it was credited to him"; it WAS ALSO FOR US, TO WHOM IT WILL BE CREDITED, who believe in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over for our transgressions and WAS RAISED FOR OUR JUSTIFICATION.

Among Western Christians, Easter spirituality has risen and fallen over the centuries due to how well (or how poorly) we understand Christ’s redemptive work. On occasions when we rationally focus on Good Friday piling all the redemptive work there and chemically isolating that from the light of the Resurrection, Easter Sunday becomes frosting, something OUTSIDE redemption and not essential to it. But EASTER is the heart of Christ’s redemptive work, not Good Friday alone! We cannot even see the Passion properly outside the light of the Resurrection. Amen, only in the light of Easter may we pray, “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.”

And so with theology of redemption and salvation skewed like this, even brilliant theologians like Saint Bernard of Clairvaux speak about the Ascension of the Lord as bearing melancholy and something depressing. This view completely misses Luke 24:50-53—

Then he led them (out) as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem WITH GREAT JOY, and they were continually in the temple praising God.

Truth be had the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Giving of the Holy Spirit, and the Parousia are all moments in the same reality. Ascension makes sense given the Resurrection. These are not separate realities. Jesus Christ IS risen.

But just what is the ascension? Did Jesus literally “take off” into outer space? Did he have a trajectory and velocity? Can we pick him up with the Hubble Space Telescope? In other words, is the Ascension a spatial reality, a kind of space travel? Is it a physical reality?

And is the ascension like any other historical event? What exactly was the time of the ascension, any way? Analysis of the New Testament shows us that dating the ascension is troublesome. The author of Luke-Acts tells the story twice: In Luke 24 we read it occurred in the evening following the Resurrection, but in Acts 1 we read that it took place forty days after the Resurrection. John 20 does not describe it, and yet it can be interpreted as having happened some time between his garden appearance to Mary Magdalene and verse 22. Given all this, maybe the Thursday-Sunday shift in the Solemnity of the Ascension is not such a big deal after all!

Certainly we Christians proclaim Jesus to be BODILY raised. This is a very important issue. Jesus was touched (John 20:27), he appeared to eat (Luke 24:41-43), he shared words with his disciples (John 21:15-22). This is hardly Gnosticism! But the Risen Lord Paul sees has been wondrously transformed, in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44. To signify this transformed and glorified state of the Risen Lord, Paul calls his body “soma pneumatikon”—a body spiritualized, that is, with properties very different from any other body in our experience. Bodily though it may be, the Resurrection is radically different than any physical bodies we contact and experience (see Mark 16:12; Matthew 28:17; Luke 24:16, 31, 41; John 20:14, 19, 26; 21:4). This body does not grow old, or fragment, or decay, or move like all the bodies we know. The resurrection and the ascension are BODILY—but not physical. They transcend what we moderns understand as matter, energy, space and time. To experience these realities we need eyes enlightened by the Holy Spirit—would a video camera pick up a Resurrection appearance? Remember, they are most unlike any ordinary physical phenomena! The ascension was REAL but not historical.

This might be shocking for you reading this. How can a Christian deny that Christ was taken up in glory? Well I for one am not denying that. Amen, I believe he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

We must make distinctions and avoid extremes. One extreme, to the right, reduces the Resurrection appearances and the Ascension to total objectivity and says that after the resurrection Jesus manifested himself to his disciples and Paul exactly how he was. This is the objectivist (a fundamentalist Christian). He or she oversimplifies the New Testament ignoring both metaphor and symbolic language and imagery used by Paul. They turn the Resurrection of Jesus Christ into basically the resuscitation of a corpse thereby losing its reality and mystery.

The other extreme, to the left, explains the Resurrection appearances and the Ascension as totally subjective—figments of the imagination, psychogenic vision, dream, or a simple literary device employed to express something different than Jesus’ bodily resurrection. The subjectivist ignores people like Paul (Galatians 1:13-16) and James (1 Corinthians 15:7) and their resistance to belief in the Resurrection. They also ignore the empty tomb and the witness of Eye-witness martyrs who knew Jesus personally and went to death proclaiming him risen and much more.

Christians should reject both these extremes.

Scholar Roch Kereszty, in his wonderfully informative and challenging Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology explains that Christians must take VERY SERIOUSLY the implications of 1 John 3:2—

Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Kereszty explains that seeing the Lord “as he is” means seeing God “face to face.” Why? Because the divine glory of the risen Christ is no longer hidden in the earthly mortal human nature. Jesus’ humanity—while not disappearing—has been transformed by the Holy Spirit and become completely transparent, so that his divinity shines through without any diminishment or obscuring. When will such a face-to-face encounter, if ever, occur? In the Kingdom or Reign of God when we are raised, completely conformed to him.

Kereszty illustrates the reasonableness of Christian faith in the Resurrection and Ascension. In these appearances, Jesus’ true body refers him to our world, and so, it is not absurd that human beings would perceive him with their senses. But that’s not all! The Risen Jesus appearing before the disciples and Paul is not like Caesar crossing the Rubicon or Alexander’s conquests! Jesus, risen and glorified, transcends the world we see and touch and know. Thus, Kereszty adds, it makes sense that we recognize him only through eyes of faith.

Kereszty explains the term “Effective Signs” as employed by Saint Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) to describe the resurrection appearances and the Ascension. Although the resurrection appearances (including the Ascension) did EFFECTIVELY communicate to the seers the reality that Christ was risen, they were nonetheless ONLY SIGNS adapted to the seers’ senses, imagination, and limitations of the disciples. They experienced the Risen One INDIRECTLY through these effective signs. DIRECT CONTACT—face-to-face contact with the Risen Lord is impossible still; it is beyond mortal human capabilities.

So the Resurrection appearances, including the Ascension, were unique events. They were objective, but not completely objective (something out there to be seen). They were subjective, but not completely subjective (something imagined). The Risen Christ is not only before the seer; he is INSIDE the sinner, transforming his or her heart. These events are not verifiable to everyone, but only those CHOSEN witnesses (see Acts 10:41). The Resurrection—and Ascension—cannot be called an ordinary historical event.

The resurrection as it is in Jesus Christ was not something his disciples—or anyone—had expected. It is shocking. Jesus is more than Superman, more than Neo at the end of Matrix. The reality of his Ascension is far greater than the mere spectacle of the appearance to the disciples—the reality is Jesus is LORD (Philippians 2:5-11). This one event, resurrection and ascension, establishes the Lordship of the man Jesus. Raised, Jesus is the font of new and eternal life; Ascended into Heaven, he has all authority over the community of existents, visible and invisible.

Do I live like that is real? Do I live as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin expressed our Blessed Lord and as Roch Kerezsty and Norris Clarke reminds us, that Jesus Christ is the "Omega Point" in the evolution of the universe, and that my end and your end is not some cosmic disaster but eternal life and love "through him, in him, and with him"? Do I really live as though life is not absurd, and that it has meaning, and that meaning is Christ, and that my deepest longings will not be thwarted or disappointed? Do I live seeing all things sacramentally, finding God in all things, trusting that salvation, hardly some bloodless angelic existence, will be through Jesus' REDEEMED BODY enfleshed in a renewed spiritualized material Universe?

The Ascension is much more than Superman flying away, role credits. It expresses Resurrection, the fundamental reality of all Christians—Jesus is Lord. It is a call to live that way. It is a call to the Authentic Gospel.

Celebrate its mystery and live it.