Feast of the Ascension
ACTS 1:1-11
In my first book, dear Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his passion, he presented himself alive to them by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them:
– Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which you heard from me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days.
So when they had come together, they asked him:
– Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?
Jesus replied:
– It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said:
– Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.
Let us review the collection of accounts and texts in the New Testament regarding the Ascension to better understand them.
MATTHEW
For Matthew, there are no appearances of the Risen One in Jerusalem. The “farewell of Jesus” takes place in Galilee, on a mountain. The time is not specified. The ending is:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
MARK (In the added epilogue)
The disciples do not go to Galilee. The farewell takes place in the Cenacle, in Jerusalem, on the same Sunday of the resurrection. Jesus gives them a message of mission similar to that of Matthew. The text ends like this:
“So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.”
LUKE (We have read it in today’s gospel text)
The disciples do not go to Galilee. The farewell takes place on the road to Bethany, on Easter Sunday. The last paragraph is:
“Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.”
JOHN (First conclusion)
The farewell takes place in the Cenacle, eight days after Easter Sunday. The “farewell discourse” was placed eight days earlier, in the appearance without Thomas. It says:
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
In the appearance with Thomas there is no discourse of mission. There is no mention whatsoever of the “departure” of Jesus.
After the first conclusion, a group of disciples are presented fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus manifests himself, eats with them, and confirms Peter’s mission.
ACTS (The first reading of today)
The farewell takes place on the Mount of Olives, forty days after the resurrection. There is a sermon of mission and a description of Jesus’ ascent into heaven, through the air, with the promise that he will return.
Summarizing the similarities and differences:
• The four gospels and Acts record a sermon of Mission as the end of Jesus’ message.
• Matthew and John do not speak of the “departure” of Jesus, but they collect the tradition of Galilee, while…
• Mark, Luke, and Acts describe the departure: “The Lord Jesus, after speaking with them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” “And while he blessed them, he parted from them.” Both place the action in Jerusalem and its surroundings. ACTS describes the departure as a lifting off into the clouds.
• The first Mark, Luke, and John (1st conclusion) end on the same Sunday of the resurrection.
• The added ending to Mark, Matthew, and John (2nd conclusion) suppose an indefinite intermediate time.
• Acts expressly speaks of forty days.
The same Paul, in 1Cor,15, gives us another version, and also a different one.
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”
Evidently, from all this, we are not dealing with the simple narration of an event, but with something more, the meaning of the event, the faith in what happens at the bottom of what is seen. In this sense, we must not forget some clear conclusions:
• It is not possible to reconstruct a “chronology of the resurrection and ascension of the Lord.” The texts do not provide it.
• It is not possible to ignore the character of “accounts of the events of that weekend” that the texts have in the first scenes, next to the tomb, and the character of “professions of faith in Jesus-Lord” that the narratives acquire.
• The texts of the Ascension are of the literary genre “Theophany”, they are written with the intention of manifesting the Faith in Jesus as Lord. They would be the texts proper to the Feast of Christ the King of the Universe. Some of them even have a strong liturgical character.
• The fact that John omits them – in parallel with the omission by the same John of the passage of the institution of the Eucharist – clearly shows us that there are several ways in which the evangelists proclaim the Faith in Jesus as the Risen Lord.
In conclusion. We are in the transition from the account of history (the death of Jesus on the cross and his burial) and the proclamation of Faith in Jesus as Lord exalted by God. And all this, in the perspective of the Mission, and with the promise of the Spirit.
EPHESIANS 1:17-23
[Therefore, I too, upon learning how you believe in the Lord Jesus and love all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you and, remembering you in my prayers, I ask…]
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
The letter to the Ephesians, probably not a letter but a treatise, almost certainly written by a disciple of Paul (the style is very different from Paul’s letters). It is one of the richest texts in the New Testament in terms of its theme, which is fundamentally about the Church, new creation and new humanity, a compact building and a growing body, the people of God and the bride of the Messiah. The mystical aspects predominate in the letter, more than the legal ones, the power of the Spirit as the source of the unity of the Church.
The text of today asks for light for hope; it is a writing that borders on the images of Revelation, but full of ideas, so sublime that they escape explanation a bit:
Christ is presented as a manifestation of the powerful force of God, which raises Him up and ascends Him to heaven, above all creation;
the Church is the fullness of God’s work, the one that completes Christ, the body of Christ, the fullness and consummation of all things.
We may perhaps be tempted to reduce symbols to historical realities: Christ ascending like a rocket and sitting on a throne; the Church with the Pope at its head recognized and acclaimed by all the states of the planet…
But these are not accounts of events but professions of faith. They are symbols of spiritual reality, of the triumph of God and the triumph of humanity, through knowledge and conversion.
The following may also be read as the second reading…
HEBREWS 9:28-48 and 10:19-23
Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made by human hands – a copy of the true one – but into heaven itself, to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor does He offer Himself repeatedly, like the high priest who enters the sanctuary year after year with blood that is not his own. If that were the case, Christ would have had to suffer many times since the foundation of the world. But as it is, He has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
The Letter to the Hebrews is a doctrinal writing, from circles close to Paul. (Tertullian says its author is Barnabas, and Clement of Alexandria says it was Luke who translated the original Hebrew into Greek).
Addressed to Jews, possibly to Jews eager to convert, it is based on continuous correspondences between the Old Testament and Jesus. Jesus the great Mediator (like Moses), the High Priest (only comparable to Melchizedek).
In this text, the death of Jesus is illustrated with the image of the annual sacrifice of Atonement (the day of Yom Kippur) of the High Priest of Israel. Christ does not offer victims, but offers Himself, and only once, as in the death of all humans. Christ does not enter the temple, a sanctuary of stones, but enters the definitive Sanctuary, of which the earthly temple is only a copy.
The image is close to that of the previous text: the church and humanity tending towards fullness, towards consummation, by the powerful action of God manifested in Jesus Christ.
Thus, the three texts proposed for today move between symbolism and message, and, together, help us understand the Ascension of the Lord. Too often we trivialize the Ascension as if it were an episode in the life of Jesus, a “final journey.” The death on the cross, the empty tomb, are events: there were witnesses, believers or not, who could testify to them. The Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the Ascension are not events that the eyes saw. They are “events of faith.” And their accounts do not tell what the eyes saw, but what faith believed.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.