LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Acts 1:1-11
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 46(47):2-3, 6-9
Second reading: Hebrews 9:24-28; 10:19-23. / Ephesians 1:17-23
Gospel: Luke 24:46-53
Link to readings
The Ascension presents some difficulties for preachers. While in general I don’t think we should let technical matters of interpretation intrude too often into the proclamation of the Word, here is one case where it seems we have to make clear that the biblical accounts – given in the First Reading (Acts 1:1-11) and the Gospel (Luke 24:46-53) – do not mean that Jesus, at the end of his earthly career, literally ascended in way described.
ASCENSION OF ELIJAH
The very clear parallels with the account in 2 Kings 2:1-18 of the ascension of the prophet Elijah (blessing disciples; promising a share of the Spirit; being carried up to heaven) suggest that St Luke is completing here his characteristic depiction of Jesus in terms of the prophet Elijah. As the prophet’s life came to an end without the experience of death – giving rise to the expectation that he would one day return as forerunner of the Messiah – so Jesus, having escaped the bonds of death by rising from the dead and having made his risen presence clearly known to those who are to become key witnesses, now makes a death-less, Elijah-like ascent to heaven, with a similar pledge of Spirit and the promise of an eventual return (Acts 1:11).
What St Luke is basically conveying by this, is the continuity between the ministry of Jesus and that of the disciples who, when empowered with the Spirit at Pentecost, will become eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word. So, the disciples are not dismayed, nor do they lament the departure of Jesus. They have a task to fulfil; they will be equipped for that task; they have Jesus’ promise that he will return. So, having worshipped the One they now recognise to be God’s Son as well as Messiah, they return to Jerusalem with great joy, to await the promised “clothing with power from on high”.
GOD’S RIGHT HAND
Beyond and along with this scriptural depiction of the event, at a more deeply theological level, the feast of the Ascension celebrates the Christian sense of Jesus’ exaltation to God’s right hand. This motif appears very early in the tradition. We find it in the closing stanza of the remarkable christological hymn quoted by Paul in Philippians 2:
“Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend – in heaven, on earth, and under the earth – and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (2:9-11).
What is envisaged here is the completion of Jesus’ messianic work: the subjugation of all powers hostile to God and the ensuing liberation of the entire cosmos for the praise and glory of God. The same sense of enthronement, following achievement of the messianic task, finds expression in the frequent reference in the New Testament to Jesus’ sitting at God’s right hand – an allusion to Ps 110:1, as in the reading from Ephes 1:17-23 set out for Year A (and optional for Years B and C as well).
ACT OF HOPE
Communicated here is, of course, a vision of the future, an act of hope. The forces hostile to God and to true humanity have by no means yet been fully overcome. The essential blow has been struck in the Paschal victory of Jesus but his messianic work continues as he breathes his Spirit into the Church that carries on his mission. What the Church must understand – what the Ascension assures her – is that accompanying all her labour and suffering is the victory of her risen Lord, who now stands at the right hand of God interceding on behalf of all (Rom 8:34).
In this sense the Ascension is not simply something that happened to Jesus – his departure, physically, from this world. It is the feast that celebrates the hope that his triumph will ultimately be ours as well.
EXALTATION OF THE RISEN LORD
The Second Reading (set down optionally for Year C), from Hebrews 9 and 10, considers the “exaltation” of the risen Lord in a somewhat different mode. The background image is that of the yearly entrance of the Jewish High Priest into the innermost sanctuary of the Temple, the Holy of Holies, on the Day of Atonement. On that day the high priest sprinkled the blood of a sacrificial animal over the cover of the ark of the covenant, enacting in this way God’s wiping away of the accumulated sins of the people. Jesus, in his obedient suffering, has acted as the final High Priest, making a single act of atonement valid for all time. Unlike the high priests of old, however, he has not gone alone into the sanctuary to meet God. Having purified us and washed us clean with his blood, he has taken us with him through the curtain (constituted by his own body) into the very presence of God.