Ascension Thoughts
Categories: feast-days
Date: 01 June 2006 07:28:37
The Ascension of our Lord has always been a Feast I haven't paid a great deal of attention to. In my last Anglican church it was celebrated, and I enjoyed the hymns and special music for the day. Since I've been attending the Orthodox Church it has featured yearly, being one of the Twelve Great Feasts, but to me it seemed, as it did before, to be just a fill-in between Pascha (Easter) and Pentecost.
This changed from Monday when I started preparing the liturgical variations for Vespers and Matins for this weekend (hymns for the Ascension are included), and it changed especially with my being at the Evening Divine Liturgy for the Ascension of our Lord last night: through the words of the various hymns, the nature, and the joy, the great joy, of this Feast seemed to become all the more clearer.
From one of the hymns:
... today You have ascended in glory from the Mount, mercifully raising our fallen nature, enthroning it with the Father on high!
From St Cyprian of Carthage (via Word from the Desert)
Then, in a cloud spread around Him, He was lifted up into heaven - so that as a conqueror, He might bring humanity to the Father.On this day, humanity is brought into heaven. Just typing that sends shivers through me: Christ brought humanity in Heaven.
Perhaps I should've known, or pondered, this before: perhaps I have, but not as deeply as now. I do confess it each Sunday with "... He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father ..." (Nicene Creed): but this fact of Christ's ascent into heaven has struck me with new force this week. It is a wondrous thing.
As St John Chrysostom wrote:
Now the angels have received that for which they have long waited, the archangels see that for which they have long thirsted. They have seen our nature shining on the King's throne, glistening with glory and eternal beauty.... Therefore they descend in order to see the unusual and marvellous vision: Man appearing in heaven.A 'marvellous vision' indeed, and a glorious foretaste of the future, with the blessing and joy that awaits us when we, humanity, shall be in Heaven with God.
And we also look forward to Pentecost, the "birthday" of the Church: it was necessary for Christ to go (cf John 16:7), so that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, could come. Again, St John Chrysostom:
On high is His body, here below with us is His Spirit. And so we have His token on high, that is His body, which He received from us, and here below we have His Spirit with us. Heaven received the Holy Body, and the earth accepted the Holy Spirit. Christ came and sent the Spirit. He ascended, and with Him our body ascended also.
Thanks and praise be to God!
Some readings I found profitable:
- a fantastic booklet, And Ascended into Heaven..., by Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky
- from blogger Seraphim: a wonderful meditation on the personal nature of the Feast of the Ascension