MAKING SENSE OF THE ASCENSION

Reflections on the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord: Acts 1:1-11, Eph 1:17-23, Mk 16:15-20

Ascension is an embarrassing feast to a scientific mind. What is disturbing about it is the legendary, even mythological character of everything associated with it: poetic and lyrical language, allegorical descriptions, etc., There is a magical, even supernatural, side of Jesus ascending into heaven and disappearing without a trace. There are many such biblical episodes, which pose a similar problem: the ascension of Enoch the patriarch, ancestor of Noah (Genesis 5:23-24), or that of the prophet Elijah, before the eyes of his successor Elisha (2 Kings 2:1-18). How do we make sense of this feast in our day and age? What does this feast mean for Jesus, His Church, and His disciples?

Ascension is not a celebration of Jesus’ disappearance. Yes, Jesus rises and a cloud comes to hide him from the gaze of his disciples. He is no longer physically present to his disciples. However, as we confess in our creed, we believe that He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. This ascent into heaven, which is more than just a space mission, is an entry into another reality and era that transcends the space-time continuum. Jesus, the Christ, and his Gospel are no longer limited to a place or people. From now on, Jesus is no longer the private property of the disciples, of a single religion, or even of a single Church. We cannot confine him in dogmas and doctrines, rites and rituals, or norms and traditions. Ascension guarantees all nations, peoples, and times a new and definitive access to God. Jesus entrusts the keys of this access to his disciples and asks them to take it to the ends of the world, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature”. Ascension officially opens everyone's history and future to God's unexpected interventions.

Athanasius in his work On the Incarnation, famously said, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God”. In a similar perspective, Swiss theologian Laurent Gagnebin in his book, Pour un christianisme en fêtes (For a Christianity in Celebrations) writes that there is an inverted symmetry and parallelism between Christmas and the Ascension. God descends to the human world in the mystery of nativity and the person of Jesus. At the Ascension, man is raised to God in the same personhood of Jesus. The movement of the Incarnation revealed in Christmas and the movement of exaltation at play in the Ascension find their balance in Jesus. Jesus is the point of mediation, who facilitates this continuous movement. Jesus facilitates God’s continuing incarnation in our God experiences, in the signs of our times, and every moment of solidarity and liberation. He also carries our prayers, the cry of the oppressed, and the needs of our planet to God’s presence. In Jesus and his mediation ministry of intercession, God and humanity are forever reconciled. Ascension challenges us to reconcile ourselves with the divine part of our humanity, or to discover the human part of the divinity.

Interestingly, while Jesus was lifted into heaven, his disciples stood staring at heaven. They are joined by two messengers who ask them, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” Our Christian life is not about standing in idleness and staring at the heavens. Our vocation is to remain on earth, in the concreteness of their humanity and the reality of everyday life. It is in our daily lives that the message of Jesus Christ will continue to be proclaimed. It is in our lives and our sharing of his word, that his presence and ministry continue in this world. To be faithful to the Gospel is to place the word of the Bible, the grace of God, always first, and the faith that saves, at the heart of daily life, of our lives as men and women, well anchored in the concrete.

To carry out this mission, a promise is made to them: that of receiving a power, that of the Holy Spirit, which will enable them to meet challenges that they do not yet suspect. They do not yet know what this spiritual force is that will fill them. Ascension prepares us for radical freedom that can help us discover God’s presence and message in new voices (lay people, women, Dalits, etc.), new themes for reflection (justice, peace, liberation, ecology, bioethics, etc.), new communities (social networks, migrants, etc.), new methods of analysis (postcolonialism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, etc.). Our mission is to recognize, sometimes against all odds, that Christ is present in the unexpected, and to concern ourselves together with justice, respect and peace, tirelessly, until Christ comes back.