Ascension of the Lord

The Ascension of the Lord is, at first glance, a puzzling mystery. St Luke, in his gospel, has Jesus carried up into heaven at the end of the Resurrection day, while in his second book, The Acts of the Apostles, acknowledged in its opening line as being a sequel to the gospel (Acts 1: 1), Jesus ascends after forty days of appearances and teaching (Acts 1: 3). The account in St Mark's gospel (Mk 16: 19) and the Great Commission of St Matthew (Mtt 28: 16-20) are different again while St John has no Ascension account at all. Nevertheless, in the liturgical calendar, we celebrate the latter Lukan version as we prepare for the great feast of Pentecost on the fiftieth day after Easter Sunday. The Bishops' Conference feel the feast is so important that the observance of the feast has been moved from the Thursday, which would be the literal fortieth day after Easter Sunday, to a Sunday. In this way more of the faithful are able to reflect on the significance of what is described in Eucharistic Prayer III as "his wondrous Resurrection and Ascension into heaven." Without explaining all the reasons for the differences in the Scriptural accounts, it is clear that the Ascension is important to our spiritual reality. The prefaces for the Solemnity help us to understand why: "... he ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before" (Preface I of the Ascension), and, "(he) was taken up to heaven in their sight, that he might make us sharers in his divinity." (Preface II of the Ascension). In addition, Eucharistic Prayer I states further: "Celebrating the most sacred day on which your Only Begotten Son, our Lord, placed at the right hand of of your glory our weak human nature, which he had united to himself...".  We can see from all of this that the Ascension plays an integral part in our understanding of the implications of the Incarnation which means the divinization of the human race through Christ Jesus. Let us pray that our minds be opened to the greatness of this mystery so that our hearts will be filled with longing to join with the Lord in his glory even as we struggle with our own difficulties of our earthly existence.