The Beautiful Opposites of Ascension
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension, when Jesus ‘goes up’ to heaven. It occurs forty days after Easter and marks the end of Jesus’s time on Earth. The Ascension anticipates the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In countries like New Zealand, where the Feast of the Ascension is not treated as a public holiday, the following Sunday is celebrated as Ascension Sunday.
We rightly put a lot of emphasis on the Resurrection, but this can sometimes feel like we have relegated the Ascension as Jesus's stage exit, making way for the Holy Spirit. But this is underselling it.
The Ascension can be seen as the culmination of the Incarnation. God came to earth and became a human being. The completion of the Incarnation is the opposite – we see a human being entering Heaven.
Jesus is true God; Jesus is true human. God comes to earth; human goes to Heaven.
The Ascension has been treated as an important feast from the very early years of the Church. In the homilies of St. John Chrysostom, from the late 300s, the Ascension is grouped with the Incarnation and the Resurrection: "Three incredible wonders ... are intertwined, and remain unbroken and immovable". He is saying that they are so intertwined, they are the same work.
Through his life and death Jesus showed himself as the example and model of the perfect human. In this way he represents all of humanity; by entering heaven in human flesh, he prefigures the day of the resurrection of the body when all creation is brought into right relationship with God.
A way of thinking about all of this is using St. Paul's language about Jesus as our "high priest". We sometimes think of priests as representatives of God. This is particularly so in the Mass or Sacrament of Reconciliation where the priest is Persona Christi, and this is good and true. However, the way in which St. Paul is talking is the other way around. He is appealing to the ideas of the Old Testament priesthood, where the high priest is the representative of the people before God. He is the one who offers the sacrifice, achieves atonement for sin and leads the people in their worship of the Most High. This is what Jesus does for us. His entering heaven is like the high priest entering the temple, except his sacrifice is forever and for all, and the liturgy he leads is the whole universe giving praise.
There is an idea that comes from Jewish mystic tradition: when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem on the Day of Atonement, the people would attach a cord around his ankle so, if anything went wrong, they could retrieve his body without having to enter the holy place.
The Ascension is the opposite symbol of this; we don't pull a high priest out, but Jesus, our high priest, pulls us in.
Jesus’s perfect humanity is the cord that facilitates all of creation being pulled up and into communion with God.
Today's Readings: Acts 1:1-11 Psalm 46 Ephesians 1:17-23 Mark 16:15-20
Source: Ascension Sunday
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