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+In the Name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
“While he blessed them, he
parted from them, and was carried up into heaven” (St. Luke 24:51).
The Christian faith calls for
the belief in miracles. It calls people to take a leap of faith in order
to understand, rather than understanding leading to faith. This is what
the great St. Anselm said many centuries ago.
This in no way means that we
are not to use our minds and stretch them to grapple with things that
are difficult to understand, but faith is the key to understanding.
The Ascension of our Lord Jesus
Christ is an essential ingredient of the Christian faith and is named
as such in the historic Creeds of the Church. It is an event when earth
and heaven intersect in a very dramatic way as was the case when the
Word became flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
We must remember that both
the Archangel Gabriel and our Lord Himself said, “With God all things
are possible.”
As we grow in faith which requires
daily activity in prayer and devotion, those elements of religion that
cannot be adequately explained cease to be stumbling blocks. God didn’t
do miraculous things to stimey us. He did miraculous things because
He is God and He chose to do them to accomplish His work, and to teach
us that life as He wills us to live and know is not two dimensional.
Beyond what we see and understand is a large world of spiritual reality
with a depth too deep for words.
I love the second stanza for
that great hymn “God moves in a mysterious way”:
Deep in unfathomable mines,
with never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright
designs, and works his sov’reign will.
Today we celebrate an incredible
action of God, the Ascension of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God,
to the right hand of His Father in Heaven. A bright design manifesting
His sovereign will, God the Father draws His Son home to Heaven from
whence He came and from where He was with the Father before the worlds
were made. Jesus Christ ascends from earth to heaven as the Incarnate
and Risen Son of God in his resurrected bodily state. He was fully God
and fully Man in the Incarnation with flesh and bones and with the wounds
of His Passion upon His sacred body; and now He ascends in that body
to heaven. He who took on human nature takes that human nature to heaven
to prepare a place for us.
The death of Jesus Christ in
the sacrifice for the sins of the world satisfied the divine justice
of God the Father and thus made atonement between God and man. The Ascension
of Jesus Christ takes Man to God as a foretaste of what is now possible
for those who have been redeemed by Christ and who give themselves to
Him as Lord and Savior. The first Adam was given heaven on earth in
the Garden of Eden, but forsook it by disobedience, and Man fell. The
second Adam came down from heaven to earth and through obedience ransomed
fallen Man in order to take him to heaven.
From another great hymn, “Praise
to the Holiest in the height”:
“O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.
O wisest love! that flesh and
blood, Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against
the foe, Should strive, and should prevail.”
The Ascension of Jesus Christ
takes our Lord out of the realm and the restrictions of time and space
so that He can be present for all people in all times and places who
call upon Him. He is free to be everywhere. He is free to hear all who
call upon Him whenever they call no matter how many call and how simultaneously
they call.
Whenever and wherever the Mass
is celebrated throughout the world, the Body and Blood of Jesus given
at Calvary is given by the Christ of Heaven through His priests on earth
who stand at the Altar in His place, in persona Christi. This
is the great sacramental fulfillment of our Lord’s words, “Lo, I
will be with you always to the end of the ages.”
You see how this Feast is worthy
of celebration and thanksgiving because this is the day on which Jesus
of Nazareth becomes the Jesus of Rosemont, Philadelphia, Wilmington,
or wherever on earth and from earth the kingdom of Heaven is sought.
As the Collect for the day states, He “ascended far above all heavens
that he might fill all things.” And through that Collect we have prayed,
“Mercifully grant us faith to perceive that, according to his promise,
he abideth with his Church on earth.”
+In the Name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
~ Bishop Moyer |
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