Forty days have now passed since our celebration of Easter and thus now we gather to celebrate the Ascention of our Lord into Heaven.
As we proclaim in the Creed: "He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father."
For this period of forty days our savior had spent His time with His apostles in order to prepare them concerning the Kingdom of God and would also lay down the structure of the Church for them. Very soon the Holy Spirit would come down upon them and they would be sent forth to preach the Gospel, baptize others into the faith, and thus spread the message of the Kingdom of God to all the earth's corners.
But before they could do this He had to be taken into His Heavenly glory. He did not undergo a second death, but rather was taken up Body and Soul into Heaven. From the Gospel of Saint Luke we hear: "While He was blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into Heaven."
From our Gospel accounts concerning the Resurrection we know that Christ still bore the wounds of His Sorrowful Passion. Thus when He blessed them His Hands would still bare the marks left behind from the nails that had pierced them. The Cross, the Ressurrection, and the Ascention into Heaven are all joined together because these events bring about the fulfillment our Lord's sacrifice. The very sacrifice that redeems us, sets us free, and thus too the Sacrifice in which we partake whenever we gather together for the Mass. At Mass we celebrate all of these mysteries.
At the Annunciation Christ humbled Himself in His descent to this earth for it was here that His divinity took on our humanity. Thus in the Ascention He was exalted for His humanity was taken into Heaven. Thus each of us are to find great consolation in this celebration. For with our Lord's Ascention we are taken up to Heaven with Him. Thus today we are reminded to glance upward with the apostles and to dwell upon this great event in the life of our Lord.
It is easy for us to get caught up in this life below, but the Ascention of our Lord elevates our mind to Heaven and thus the Everlasting life which awaits us there. Through the Ascention we are lifted in our humanity and shown that something greater awaits us. Thus as Christians, though difficult, we can rejoice with death. For death is not the end, but a continuation of our life.
Despite the difficulty of the cross that we must embrace we are to look upwards and realize that Christ has elevated our humanity to Heaven. He has now gone before us and we have thus been redeemed. The Ascention is not a goodbye, but rather serves as an assurance of Christ's continued presence among us.
Thus we set our sight upon Christ and allow Him to form us into His disciples in order that we may be sent into the world to spread the Good News and to thus to rejoice with Christ always
