Today we celebrate the Ascension of our Lord into Heaven.
To understand the importance of this day we must understand the importance of the Incarnation. As we say in the Nicene Creed: “He came down from heaven, and by the power of the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.” This means that from the very beginning Christ as second Person of the Most Holy Trinity existed, but despite this existence had yet to take on our human flesh. The Incarnation is most important because through it God becomes man.
Therefore, we can conclude that prior to the Ascension God as man had yet to dwell in Heaven. Let us remember that at the point of the crucifixion He was not yet taken up to Heaven, but rather in the words of the Apostle’s Creed, He “descended into hell.” This is not the hell of the damned, but the place where the dead went because they could not yet enter into Heaven because our Lord’s Sacrifice had yet come to its competition.
The Ascension is an important moment in our faith because it was not the second death of our Lord. Instead He was taken up not only in His Divinity, but also in His humanity. He was taken up body and soul into Heavenly glory. As often depicted in art concerning this mystery of our faith we see the apostles looking upward at a pair of feet as our Lord in lifted Body and Soul into Heaven.
In the words of Saint Leo the Great: “Today we are not only made possessors of Paradise but with Christ we have ascended, mystically but also really, to the highest Heavens and have won through Christ a grace more wonderful than the one we had lost.”
We must join with the apostles in looking upward. We must realize that this celebration serves as a foreshadowing of what awaits us in the life to come. Unfortunately, so many lose sight of where we are headed. Where our Lord has now gone we should hope to follow. To celebrate the Ascension is to say that I desire above all things to get to Heaven and thus will open my life up to God and His grace.
Instead of looking upward we are found looking down. We see the trials and fears which come with this life and we allow them to overcome us. We caught up in life’s passions and become enslaved to them through our lack of setting our sight upon what is truly important. Dearest brethren we must now look up and realize we are not living a fantasy, but rather that our Blessed Lord has now gone before us into Heaven.
