Reflections on Feast of the Ascension

Ascension of Christ - Garofalo 1520

The Feast of the Ascension strikes many Christians as the poor relative of the two rather bigger celebrations which top and tail the long and joyful season of Eastertide: Easter itself, and Pentecost. But Damian Howard SJ, writing in Thinking Faith, ascribes to this feast the utmost significance. What are we to make of the story of Jesus being taken up into a cloud, an episode that not only sounds like mythology but also violates our modern sense of space?

In between our celebrations of the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter and of the gift of the Spirit to His disciples, the ‘birthday of the Church’ at Pentecost, we observe another feast: the Feast of the Ascension. For all the memorable imagery that the story of Jesus’s ascension into heaven evokes, it still strikes many Christians as a rather curious episode. To put it crudely, had Jesus simply ascended vertically into space we would by now expect him to be somewhere in the outer reaches of the solar system, a thought that is hardly an aid to Christian devotion.

To read on see: www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20120516_1.htm

Thinking Faith has also published two more reflections on today's feast:

Philip Endean SJ discusses the move of the celebration of the Feast of the Ascension in many countries from the Thursday forty days after Easter to the following Sunday in this piece: www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20120521_1.htm

and finally, Jack Mahoney considers the Ascension and Pentecost with St Luke:
www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20100513_2.htm