From Fr. Seraphim Rose and Fr. George Florovsky
“God is ascended with celebration and the Lord with the sound of a trumpet” (Psalms 46:5)
Today we celebrate the feast of the Ascension of our Lord. In the Ascension resides the meaning and the fullness of Christ’s Resurrection.
The Lord did not rise in order to return again to the material order of life, to live and commune with the disciples and the multitudes through preaching and miracles. After His Resurrection He didn’t even stay with them, but only appeared to them from time to time during the forty days; and always in a miraculous and mysterious manner.
“He was not always with them now, as He was before the Resurrection,” – comments St John Chrysostom, – “He came and again disappeared, thus leading them on to spiritual understanding. He no longer permitted them to continue in their former relationship towards Him, but took measures to establish in their mind these two things: that the fact of His Resurrection should be believed, and that He Himself should be ever after understood to be greater than man.”
There was something new and unusual in His person. That is why the disciples were confused and frightened. Christ arose not in the same way as those who were previously restored to life by Him, like Lazarus. Theirs was a resurrection for a time, and they returned to life in the same body, which was subject to death and corruption – returned to the previous mode of life. But Christ arose forever, unto eternity. He arose in a body of glory, immortal and incorruptible. He arose, never to die, for “He clothed the mortal in the splendour of incorruption”, as the Apostle says (1 Cor. 15).
His glorified Body was already exempt from the physical order of existence. This mysterious transformation of His human body had been accomplished while He was lying in the sepulchre. Christ’s work on earth was accomplished.
He had suffered, was dead and buried, and now rose to a higher mode of existence. By His Resurrection He abolished and destroyed death, abolished the law of corruption, “and raised with Himself the whole race of Adam.” Christ is risen, and now “no dead are left in the grave,”– As St John Chrysostom says in his Easter Sermon. And now He ascends to the Father, yet He does not “go away,” but abides with the faithful for ever (The Kontakion of Ascension).
What does this mean for us, the Orthodox Christians? It is not only Jesus Christ Who has ascended; with Christ, man’s nature has ascended also. He has raised human nature itself to the heavens. We too shall rise from the dead and, if we are judged worthy, will rise with our regenerated, spiritual body to heaven, where, as the Blessed Augustine says, “all the people of God shall be made equal to the angels.”
“We who seemed unworthy of the earth, are now raised to heaven,” says St John Chrysostom. “We who were unworthy of earthly dominion have been raised to the Kingdom on high, have ascended higher than heaven, have come to occupy the King’s throne, and the same nature from which the angels guarded Paradise, stopped not until it ascended to the throne of the Lord.”
By His Ascension the Lord not only opened to man the entrance to heaven, not only appeared before the face of God on our behalf and for our sake, but likewise He transferred man to the high places. He honoured our nature by putting it close to the Father. “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6).
Heaven received the inhabitants of the earth. Jesus Christ as “the first fruits of the dead” sits now on high, and in Him all creation is summed up and bound together. “The earth rejoices in mystery, and the heavens are filled with joy.”
But the thought of this mystery reminds us also of our responsibility. The risen Lord is no longer with us in the flesh, but only through His invisible Holy Spirit. Time between the First and Second Coming of Christ is for us a time of witness and testimony of Him Whom we worship without seeing.
The Lord, just before His Ascension, commanded His disciples: “Go ye into the entire world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark. 16:15); and He told them: “Ye shall be my witnesses… unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Christ has been with us for forty days, and we have rightly feasted; we must now, being filled with the Holy Spirit of God, strive to spread His Gospel and be His witnesses before the world. For everything that we do, or fail to do, we shall be judged by Him Who shall return to earth in the same way He ascended to Heaven.
With such a sobering thought in mind, how can we not be zealous to make His truth known, so that all may join in the joyous cry of this feast: “Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, and Thy glory over all the earth” (Ps. 107:5).
Amen.
