The Ascension

For forty days after Pascha the risen Christ was "seen of them forty days" and spoke "of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3). Then, having led the disciples out toward Bethany on the Mount of Olives, He lifted up His hands and blessed them, "and it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven" (Luke 24:50-51); "and a cloud received him out of their sight" (Acts 1:9). Two angels immediately turned the disciples' gaze forward: "this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11).

The Church keeps the feast of the Ascension on the fortieth day after Pascha — always a Thursday — as one of the Twelve Great Feasts. Notice the mood of the ending of Luke's Gospel: the disciples returned to Jerusalem not bereaved but "with great joy." Whatever the Ascension is, the men who watched it did not experience it as a loss.

The Ascension is the crowning of the Incarnation. The Son of God came down without leaving heaven; He returned without leaving His humanity behind. The body born of the Virgin, nailed to the cross, and raised from the tomb was carried above every rank of angels to the Father's right hand — which is not a place in the sky but the position of divine honor and power. In Christ, human nature itself has been enthroned. St. Leo the Great preached that "Christ's Ascension is our uplifting, and the hope of the Body is raised, whither the glory of the Head has gone before": where the Head has gone, the members are meant to follow.

This is why St. Paul applies the Psalm verse "Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive" (Psalm 68:18) to Christ's ascent (Ephesians 4:8), and why he says Christ "ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things" (Ephesians 4:10). The Ascension does not put Christ farther from us but nearer: no longer localized to one place in Galilee, He now fills all things, and His promised answer to the disciples' loss was not a memory but a Person — "if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you" (John 16:7). Ten days later came Pentecost.

The Epistle to the Hebrews draws out what the Ascension means now: "we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God" (Hebrews 4:14), one who "ever liveth to make intercession" for those who come to God by Him (Hebrews 7:25). In the Old Covenant the high priest passed through the veil once a year with the blood of animals; Christ has passed through the heavens themselves, bearing His own glorified humanity, and He appears before the Father on our behalf perpetually. Every Divine Liturgy is offered in union with this heavenly intercession — the Church on earth joining a worship already under way.

And the angels' words fix the Church's posture until the end: He "shall so come in like manner." The Ascension is the hinge between Christ's first coming in humility and His second coming in glory, and the Creed binds the two together: He ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. Orthodox Christians therefore live between a real presence and a real expectation — prophet, priest, and king, reigning now, returning visibly.