Mark 16:15-20
Ascension of the Lord
by Rev. Joseph M. Rampino
Reprinted with permission of "The Arlington Catholic Herald"

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Mark wrote to explain Christ
to the new Gentile converts.

Jesus said to his disciples: "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.  Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.  These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages.  They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them.  They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."

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.  But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word though accompanying signs.

Each year, the Ascension of Jesus into heaven provides us with a deep mystery.

It is a moment that, at least in terms of its impact on our lives as Christians, can be difficult to understand.  It presents as a sort of logical end to the heroic story of Christ's life.  His work of dying and rising complete, now he goes home, rising off into the sun, telling us to remember and carry out the mission he gave us, the credits run, the movie ends, and we go back home to our daily lives.

This way of looking at the Ascension, of course, misses its core meaning and leaves us with a deeply impoverished vision of what it means to be Christian.  When we consider the Ascension of Jesus, we should remember two things that Christ is accomplishing by returning to the Father.  He is taking us into heaven with him, and he is making himself more present to all Christians through time and space.

First then, Christ takes us with him ito heaven.  We should remember that since he is God, Christ has i one sense never left heaven to begin with.  Through the entire course of his lioer on earth, as the eternal Son he was always with the Father.  At the Ascension, he is not so much going back to a place that he had left as he is ringing his human nature, the nature that he shares with us into the complete glory of eternal life.  He does not go to heaven the way the saints go to heaven, in soul only, but Christ's humanity enters God's eternity complete in body as well.  This is new.  From now on, time and eternity, the finite and the infinite, exist together in one person.  And since we are members of Christ's body by baptism and the Eucharist, we have begun to be there with him, too.  After the Ascension, even in the midst of our daily lives with all of their concerns and tasks, we have started to live in an eternal way, and have received the first taste of heaven's freedom.

Second, by ascending to the Father, Christ makes himself present to al of us.  This might seem counter-intuitive, since we clearly do not see the  human face of the Lord.  We wonder what it would have been like to talk with him, to hear him preach in person, to watch him work miracles.  But of course, if Christ had remained with us just as he was during his earthly life and public ministry, then very few of us would have had the chance to meet him anyways.  During his earthly life, he preached only as far as he could walk, and he only met those in the tiny region of Galilee and Judea.  After the Ascension, however, his visible presence has passed into the sacraments, and now, wherever there is a tabernacle, he is really present.  Millions of people can enter his presence and speak intimately with him at every moment.  Now he can be with all of us.

On the first Easter Sunday, Christ said to Mary Magdalene: "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father."  The implication is that after the Ascension, she, and we, should then hold him fast.  Today he takes our nature into a beautiful new place forever, and calls us to exactly this, so that one day we may experience with him the complete beauty of heaven's peace without end.