In United States and in Canada the Feast of Ascension is no longer celebrated on Thursday of the 6th week of Easter. It has been moved to the 7th Sunday of Easter. This move has been made so that we have an opportunity to celebrate this important feast which we were neglecting so much when we celebrated it on a Thursday.
Some clues to the importance of the mystery of the Ascension of the Lord can be found in the readings assigned to the liturgy today. The first reading from Acts of the Apostles narrates of what the followers of Jesus experienced. After forty days of being with them in His resurrected body, he told them to remain close to Jerusalem where God would baptize them in His Holy Spirit. They are to wait for God’s Spirit to “fill” them in a way – to be born again into a new creation. It explains the necessity of Christ’s Ascension. For without His Ascension Pentecost, the out pouring of the Holy Spirit would not have happened.
It seems to us that the Ascension event does not make much sense and meaning unless we try to put ourselves into the situation of the disciples of Jesus. After the terrible suffering of the loss of Jesus through a humiliating death He returns to them, in a “glorified” state. We are not sure what that actually looks or feels like. But He eats and drinks with them, and strengthens them with His loving and demanding presence to them. Now, having upset everyone’s emotional and spiritual feelings, he walked out to a hilltop at Bethany and went up – “ascended”– from their sight. The disciples had not yet received the fullness of the Spirit and that they were struggling to deal with their grief and loss, and any number of other possible feelings. But we read in St. Luke’s Gospel; “They worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.”
That means through Resurrection and Ascension the one thing the Apostles knew absolutely was that Jesus is the LORD. He is everything they ever imagined God would be like. He is truth and goodness, and he has commanded them to be patient and wait for the out pouring of the Holy Spirit. In their absolute confusion, one thing was certain; Jesus is LORD and all reality comes into focus only in Him. More than physically ascending from earth to heaven, Jesus Ascended to their hearts, and rightly claimed their absolute loyalty. For this reason, they could fully drown in God’s Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
The Ascension of our Lord is both an end and a beginning for the disciples and for us all. While it was the end of His physical presence with the disciples, it marked the beginning of His presence with us in a new way. God has not left us; God has instead come to us in a new way. It speaks not of loss but of gain; the gain of God’s presence and power that comes to us in Christ Jesus. When Jesus departed physically from the Apostles, they were not left in sorrow or grief. Instead they were filled with joy and with great anticipation for the coming of the Holy Spirit.
The Ascension of our Lord opened the door of heaven for all His faithful followers. It allowed the Holy Spirit to descend to fill us and guide us. And it put God’s people to work for His glory in the world.
In the Gospels we see, what Jesus did before Ascending. He opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them and to us; you are the witnesses of these things I have done for you. So, go into the world and proclaim the Good News to the whole creation. But wait for the out pouring of the Holy Spirit to carry out that mission.
Therefore, we wait for the power of the Spirit, as in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. We wait for the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened as in the second reading from the letter to the Ephesians. We wait to be clothed with power from on high through the out pouring of the Holy Spirit. We have received all of these gifts and yet we still wait for their fulfillment in our lives. May this time of waiting between Ascension and Pentecost and His second coming fill us with joy and complete trust in our God to carry out His mission through us.