More Present Now
The Ascension of the Lord. Fr Nicholas Crowe reassures his younger self.
Today we celebrate the Ascension of our Lord into heaven. When I was a child I found this to be a very puzzling celebration. Why were we celebrating Jesus going away? Wouldn’t it be better if he was still physically with us? Wouldn’t it be better if we could get in an aeroplane and go and visit him? Isn’t Jesus going away to heaven where we can’t reach him a bad thing?
Now given that this was such a point of confusion for me as a child I feel I ought to address it immediately. The Ascension is not about Jesus going away and leaving us. We do not celebrate our Lord’s absence this Sunday but a new kind of presence, one that lifts up human nature to the very throne of heaven.
Before the resurrection and ascension, Jesus’ bodily presence was limited. Only those fortunate enough to live in a particular place and time could encounter him firsthand. Even among his contemporaries, only a few could know him closely, personally, intimately.
Now, after his resurrection and ascension, Jesus transcends these limitations. He is no longer restricted by space and time as we are. He can be intimately present to all people, everywhere, and in every age. We don’t need to get in an aeroplane to encounter Christ, he is with us now. He is present in the Eucharist, he speaks to us personally through Scripture, he is there wherever two or three gather in his name. God is with us now.
However, my confusion as a child is understandable. The disciples clearly did experience the Ascension, on one level, as a departure. We heard the two angels in our first reading declare: ‘Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking int the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there’.
It certainly sounds like the disciples saw Jesus go away; they are promised that one day he will come back. The Ascension does indeed appear to be a moment with our Lord withdraws from us for a time until his return to us in glory. How then can I insist that this in-between-time after the resurrection and ascension of our Lord but before our Lord’s return in glory at the end of time is not a season of absence? How can our Lord be with us if he has – in fact – gone from us to his Father? Our second reading from the letter to the Hebrews explains.
We heard in our second reading that our Lord entered ‘heaven itself, so that he could appear in the actual presence of God on our behalf’. But the entry of our Lord into heaven does not mark his absence from us because we are united to him as a head is united to a body. When our Lord is lifted up and enters the presence of God, he brings us with him because we are united to him by faith and the sacraments. The letter to the Hebrews explains: ‘through the blood of Jesus we have the right to enter the sanctuary, by a new way which he has opened for us, a living opening through the curtain, that is to say, his body.’ In short, when Jesus is lifted up he does not depart from us because we are lifted up through him, in him, and with him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
This is why the Ascension is instrumental to our salvation. Through our union with Christ, who is with us still, we are lifted up with him to the right hand of the Father in heaven. He is our head, we are his body. Where our head has gone, we will one day follow. He has gone ahead to prepare a place for us that we will one day share because we remain united to Him and are raised up in and through Him.
This explains why our Gospel reading concluded with such joy. We heard St. Luke tells us that as he said goodbye our Lord: ‘lifted up his hands and blessed them. Now as he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven. They worshipped him and then went back to Jerusalem full of joy; and they were continually in the temple praising God.’ Our Lord withdrew from them, and yet the disciples were full of joy, because they knew that he was still with them in the midst of the Church, and that one day his presence to them would be still more intense and perfect. The Ascension is not a farewell, but a transition to a new and deeper intimacy, with the promise of a still greater communion to come.
Readings: Acts 1:1-11 | Hebrews 9:24-28,10:19-23 | Luke 24:46-53
