The Glorious Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ into Heavenly Glory

Are you staring up at the sky, wondering if Christ has abandoned us to fight the battles of this world alone? The profound mystery of the Ascension completely shatters that fear. The day of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus into Heaven is not a sorrowful farewell, but rather the glorious, triumphant final act of our redemption, a profound journey that Christ definitively began on the bloody wood of Good Friday. By ascending bodily into glory, Jesus did not leave human nature behind; He permanently elevated our humanity, placing it directly at the right hand of God the Father. This ancient, majestic solemnity assures us that where the Head has gone, the Body, His Church, is destined to follow, granting us the ultimate hope of eternal, physical glorification.

The day of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus into Heaven is the final act of our redemption that Christ began on Good Friday. It is a very ancient festivity of the Catholic Church. It occurred exactly forty days after Jesus Christ rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. On this glorious day of the Ascension, the risen Christ, in the direct sight of His astonished apostles, ascended bodily into Heaven, a profound event narrated in the Gospels of Luke 24:51, Mark 16:19, and in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles 1:9-11.

Date: Seventh Sunday of Easter

Roman Martyrology: The Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in which, forty days after the resurrection, Jesus was elevated into heaven before His disciples, to sit at the right hand of the Father until He will come again in glory to fiercely judge the living and the dead.

The Ascension of the Lord

The festivity of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus is so fundamentally important that the Creed of the Church contains this explicit affirmation, in the exact words of the Apostles' Creed, that "He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; from there He will come to judge the living and the dead." To deny the glorious Ascension of Our Lord is just as grave and destructive as the denial of Christ's Resurrection itself.

Saint Thomas Aquinas brilliantly taught that the Ascension is the ultimate cause of our salvation because it opens the gates of Heaven. By entering the heavenly sanctuary, Christ becomes our Eternal High Priest, constantly interceding for us before the Father with the very wounds of His passion.

The bodily Ascension of Christ definitively prefigures our own future entry into heaven, not simply as spiritual souls after our physical death, but eventually as glorified, physical bodies, after the resurrection at the Final Judgment.

In redeeming humanity, Christ did not merely offer spiritual salvation to our souls, but He actively began the complete restoration of the material world itself to the original, perfect glory that God intended long before the tragic fall of Adam.

• "As they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight." (Acts 1:9)
• "God mounts his throne amid shouts of joy; the Lord, amid trumpet blasts." (Psalms 47:6)
• "And he put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way." (Ephesians 1:22-23)
• "So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God." (Mark 16:19)

On the glorious day of the Ascension, Jesus triumphantly went up to the very place He had never truly left in His divinity. When had He ever ceased to be at the right hand of God the Father, constantly by His side, face to face with Him? So, what was the profound purpose of this physical journey? Flesh carries the exact same heavy weight as the earth, and when the eternal Son of God took on human flesh, He fully took on its earthly weight as well.

An unprecedented, unheard-of novelty suddenly appeared: the celestial and the earthly coexisted in perfect communion in the divine person of Jesus Christ. This was not due to some witty, original idea, but rather to a profound, saving mission: that all human flesh would finally receive heavenly heights. That is to say, every human person, and with them all of creation, would belong entirely to God and receive eternal immortality and glory.

For this specific reason, He made this journey: from heaven to earth and from earth back to heaven, without ever having ceased to be in heaven and without ever truly being absent from the earth.

Feast of the Ascension of the Lord

The Feast of the Ascension of the Lord joyfully celebrates that the resurrected humanity of the Son, after spending forty transformative days on earth with His disciples, finally reaches His absolute glory, perfectly culminating His saving mission right alongside the Father.

He permanently arrives at the glorious place for which the humanity of the Son had been specifically created, through which absolutely everything has been created. And absolutely everything created must be ultimately brought to where the Son currently is, to draw intimately close, entirely through Him, to God the Father.

This majestic event is also the strictly necessary preamble to Pentecost. Christ Himself declared, "If I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you" (John 16:7). The Ascension creates the space for the Holy Spirit to descend in power, animating the Church for its global mission.

The Ascension of the Lord Allows Two Things:

1. First, that the disciples of Jesus fully assume their heavy responsibilities based on the profound knowledge and lived experience of everything that the Master has revealed about the Father. The continued physical presence of Jesus, even among us as after His resurrection, would have significantly interrupted the necessary assumption of our own earthly mission and tasks.
   
   
2. Secondly, that He personally prepares the glorious place toward which we, the children of God, are advancing. Jesus currently is exactly where we will eventually have to be, and from there He constantly pulls us upward so that we may progress, perfectly consummating in us exactly what God made us for: to participate fully in His eternal glory.

This magnificent feast of the Ascension of the Lord is absolutely not a spiritual disregard for the earth. On the contrary, the fact that Jesus Christ is elevated to the highest heavenly heights is the necessary exercise so that absolutely everything ascends a little bit with Him. We must work diligently here so that ultimately everything becomes an elevation, without ever losing the physical weight and reality of what was created.

The Ascension and the Great Mission

The Gospel passage of Saint Mark, which powerfully narrates the event of the day of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus, specifically begins with a strict mandate from Christ that alludes directly to that journey towards heaven: "Go." The Good News must be firmly supported and carried by the physical feet of the Lord's disciples. Only someone who has had a profound, personal experience of the resurrected Christ is truly accredited to be the feet and the bold spokesperson of this immense joy of "God with us."

On human feet, one walks at a human pace but significantly lightened and powerfully strengthened by the Holy Spirit. This is not just so that the message reaches many or even very many, but strictly "the whole creation." We absolutely must walk in all directions, each one specifically on the plot of land that God asks us to tread upon, without deep frustration for reaching only a little and entirely without laziness to avoid walking the distance that is demanded of us.

Ultimately, human steps advance steadily through the impulses of small, daily stretches, but they are feet powerfully anointed by God for the specific mission where He is already fully present. And He boldly sends them out even when, in the preceding verses (which do not appear in today's fragment), He sharply reproached them for their severe lack of faith for stubbornly not believing the eyewitnesses of His resurrection.

On the one hand, He firmly warns us of how critically important it is to believe those who faithfully testify to the resurrected Jesus and to absolutely not give any credit to those who falsely claim to have seen Him dead in the tomb.

On the other hand, despite this shocking initial incredulity, He trusts these "Eleven" to the incredible point that He fully entrusts them with the massively important mission of continuing His saving work. They are to make known the merciful love of God and His strict justice, so that, by knowing Him, people may believe in Him and be eternally saved.

He also explicitly speaks of powerful signs that will actively accompany those who believe, which clearly refer to the facilitation of the mission by the Holy Spirit (driving out demons in the mighty name of Jesus and speaking new languages), a highly special physical protection, and the divine capacity to restore health.

On the day of the Ascension of the Lord, Christ Himself goes up into heaven, to the right hand of God the Father, and He absolutely does not leave His beloved disciples alone. From there He will be constantly pulling His own people and the entire world so that they progress upward, actively cooperating to firmly confirm the word "through accompanying signs," and powerfully sending the Holy Spirit, who will be the absolutely essential companion to undertake this massive mission and bear abundant fruit.

🌟 4 Fascinating Facts About the Ascension

1. The Mount of Olives

According to ancient Christian tradition and the Acts of the Apostles, the glorious Ascension took place on the Mount of Olives. This location is profoundly symbolic, as it was the exact same place where Christ experienced His deepest earthly agony before the Passion, turning the site of His ultimate sorrow into the exact launching pad of His ultimate triumph.

2. The Imprint of His Feet

In Jerusalem, the Chapel of the Ascension currently houses a revered stone that traditionally bears the physical imprint of Christ's right foot. For centuries, countless pilgrims have deeply venerated this spot, which serves as a powerful, tangible reminder that the Son of God truly walked our dusty earth before elevating our human nature into heavenly glory.

3. The Extinguishing of the Paschal Candle

In the traditional Roman Rite liturgy, the large Paschal Candle, which brilliantly represents the physical presence of the Risen Christ on earth, is often solemnly extinguished immediately following the reading of the Gospel on Ascension Thursday, visually symbolizing His bodily departure from the sight of the apostles.

4. The "Ascensiontide" Novena

The nine days strictly spanning between the solemnity of the Ascension and the magnificent feast of Pentecost actually constitute the very first novena in the history of the Catholic Church. The apostles, along with the Blessed Virgin Mary, locked themselves in the Upper Room in constant prayer, directly following Christ's command to wait for the Holy Spirit.

Elevating Our Hearts to the Heavenly Kingdom

The glorious solemnity of the Ascension violently shatters our excessive attachment to the passing things of this world. As Saint Augustine powerfully proclaimed, "Let us ascend with Him, that we may not perish on earth." Christ has deliberately left the door to eternity wide open for us. Our daily struggles, when united to His cross, are no longer meaningless pain, but the exact steps on the glorious ladder that leads our redeemed humanity directly into the joyful embrace of the Father.

Prayer for the Solemnity of the Ascension

Almighty and eternal God, we rejoice in the glorious Ascension of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Fill our hearts with unshakeable hope, for His triumph over sin and death is the definitive promise of our own future glory. Grant that we, who firmly believe He is seated at your right hand in majesty, may also continually dwell with Him in spirit. Empower us with the Holy Spirit to boldly witness to His love across the earth, until that magnificent day when He returns in glory to gather us into His eternal kingdom. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Every single step we take in faith here on earth is intimately connected to the glorious throne where Christ now reigns. Will you boldly accept His great commission today and become the active, living hands and feet of Jesus in a world that desperately needs His heavenly light?