(When we talk of Easter as being fifty days - as in the modern Calendar - I worry that the Feast of the Ascension will be neglected for it belongs to the 40 plus 10 scheme! thus...)
Christians think of the festival of Christmas as the arrival of the Son of God in the world, or even as his descent into the world.
In terms of arrival, they are speaking in common sense language as when they say, “Her baby has arrived!” In fact, they mean arrived in a visible way in space and time so that the place and time of birth can be stated.
The Son of God with his divine nature exists from eternity unto eternity in the infinite divine sphere; but in terms of both the divine sense of time and of human chronological time there was a moment when the Son of God in a unique manner arrived in space and time, and that moment was the conception of Jesus by Mary through the presence and action of the Holy Ghost. The act of Incarnation by the Son of God began at the conception by Mary of Jesus and came to its physical completion in the birth from Mary of Jesus. So the arrival of Jesus, Son of God and son of Mary, one Person, we date on Christmas Day. We also say in the Creed, “He descended from heaven and was incarnate of the Virgin Mary.” So his arrival is also his descent.
Christians think of the Feast of the Ascension as the departure of the Son of God from earth and his ascent into heaven.
After his ministry as the Messiah, his death and burial as the sacrificed Lamb of God, and his being raised from the dead as the victorious Saviour, the resurrected Jesus in his new body of glory visited his apostles and disciples for a period of forty days. Then he departed from them, not to be seen again in physical, bodily form. On the last of these forty days, in his final resurrection appearance and described in Acts 1, there was a clear demonstration to the assembled disciples of where precisely Jesus was going and where he would be for the future. The cloud into which he went up was no ordinary white cloud in the sky, but the luminous cloud of glory known in the Old Testament as the sign of the presence of YHWH, the LORD, and called by the Jews, the Shekinah. Thus he ascended as the God-Man, the Incarnate Logos, into heaven, into the immediate presence of GOD, the Father.
The Feast of the Ascension is the festival which crowns that of Easter and prepares us for that of Pentecost.
Before he departed and ascended, he taught his disciples all that they needed to know about his identity and mission, and he promised them the Paraclete (Counsellor, Advocate, Comforter – the Holy Ghost as the Spirit of Christ) to be with them all, wherever they were in space and time.
The descent of the Paraclete to the waiting disciples and for the full creation of the Church of God is what is celebrated on Whit Sunday, the Feast of Pentecost (Acts 2), ten days after the Ascension into heaven. We may say that the Lord Christ came to his people in, with and by the presence of the Holy Ghost, his Paraclete.
However, the exalted Lord Jesus will remain where he is in terms of his perfected human nature - on the throne of glory- until he descends once more into space and time at the end of the age, until, that is, he arrives in glory on earth, in order to judge the living and the dead, consummate the purposes of God and inaugurate the new age of the kingdom of God. His coming and arrival in great glory as the Resurrected, Exalted Lord is the basis of the Christian Hope.
In the interim, the period of the evangelization of the world by the Church, the Holy Ghost is present as the Paraclete to make the Lord Jesus known on earth and to enable the Church to ascend in heart and mind to dwell with the same Lord Jesus in heaven, even as her members are pilgrims on earth.
The ancient Collect for the Feast of the Ascension from the late patristic era is:
"Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty Father, that in the intention of our mind (heart) we may ever tend thither, where the glorious Author of today's festival hath entered in, and that to the place, whither we reach forward by faith, we may come by our holy conversation through Jesus Christ....."
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.),
Christ Church, Biddulph Moor & St Anne's, Brown Edge
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