From the Acts of the Apostles: “And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight” (1:9).
As I often complain this time of year, we have a tendency to treat the Ascension as something of an after-thought, a way to get Jesus off-stage after His Resurrection so that the Holy Ghost can take over at Pentecost. But the Ascension is far from an after-thought; rather, it is the consummation, the fulfillment, of all that Our Lord’s Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection were for. The Lord of Life who became the first-fruits of the new humanity by His Resurrection now becomes the “King of Glory” (Ps. 24:7-10), seated at the right hand of the Father.
This would be an incomparably wondrous event, even if it just pertained to Jesus, but it also pertains to us. For Christ did not put off His humanity when He returned to the Father. He did not lay it aside like a garment once it had served His saving purposes. No, He carries His humanity—our humanity—into the very heart of the Godhead itself. That same humanity that He received from the Blessed Virgin Mary, that same humanity that He shares with us as our Brother—He carried it with Him into glory. As St. Paul writes in Ephesians, God the Father “raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (2:6). Where He now sits on the throne of His majesty, we also sit. Where He has gone before, we shall follow after if we remain faithful to Him. Because He now dwells in heavenly places, we now dwell in God Himself. The life of the Holy Trinity is now our life, and with it all the blessedness, love, and peace that is the divine life.
As the author of Hebrews tells us, “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (2:14-15). The King of Glory seated on the throne of glory was once the Man of Sorrows who reigned from the Tree. As the great Advent hymn says, “Those dear tokens of his passion / still his dazzling body bears.” The agony and suffering, the humiliation and torment—all that He knew of grief in His humanity, He carries with Him into glory and redeems it. He sympathizes with our weakness, with our sorrow. He is near to all those who suffer because He still bears within His glorious Body the wounds of His Passion. He knows the sorrow of the one whose life has been overturned by war, the one who lies in agony on the sick-bed, the one who suffers injustice and rejection, the one whose child has been cruelly slain. He does not turn away from those who suffer; He dwells with them.
And He calls upon us to dwell with them, too. At the end of the Ascension account in Acts, the Angels chide the Apostles: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” (1:11). In other words: Why are you standing around? You have work to do! At the end of St. Mark’s Gospel, he writes, “So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them” (16:19-20). They went forth and preached, while the Lord worked with them.
We, too, are called to stop standing around, to go forth and preach the Gospel of peace and mercy, of healing and redemption, of grace and life. To the poor, to the suffering, to the neglected, to the persecuted, we are called to bring the message of life. Not empty words, not vain platitudes, but the saving and powerful Gospel of Christ. We are called to be prophets of light, rejecting the darkness and evil of this world. As the Apostles preached, the “Lord work[ed] with them.” And He works with us, too, through the power of the Spirit, lest we believe that any of this has anything to do with our own efforts. And so, let us no longer stand around but go forth rejoicing in the mystery of the Ascension, rejoicing in the Lord’s glory that is also our glory. Let us go and preach everywhere the saving mystery of Christ to a world desperately in need of it.