When he had said this, as they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
Jesus departed from the realm of immediate physical visibility to his disciples, but he did not abandon them by doing so. What they lost in the ability to see his body and to hear his audible voice would be more than balanced by his newly deepened spiritual closeness. He had promised, "I am with you always, to the end of the age" (see Matthew 28:20) and we read about the fulfillment of this promise in today's Gospel were Mark wrote that "the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs".
The Ascension was not a retreat or a withdrawal. It was not stepping aside and becoming inactive so that the disciples could now act instead, as though he were Aslan traveling to a distant land and leaving Narnia to fend for itself, perhaps to learn some important lessons. Rather the Ascension, as we hear in today's psalm, was an enthronement.
God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.
Since the Son of God was never absent from the throne in his divinity we must infer that it was his glorified human nature that was now made to sit down at the right hand of the Father. And because his disciples and we ourselves are not actually distant from the risen and ascended Lord this has direct consequences for the Church and for us. The Ascension led directly to the sending of the Holy Spirit. It was by implicating our own humanity in the full Trinitarian life of God that the gift of Pentecost was made possible. It was the glorification of the humanity of Jesus, begun at the resurrection, but realized more perfectly in the ascension, that overflowed into the mystical body of Jesus, the Church, filling it with every grace and blessing.
And he put all things beneath his feet
and gave him as head over all things to the church,
which is his body,
the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.
There are clearly some responses to the ascension that are not appropriate for Christians. The first one is "standing there looking at the sky" in a daze of disinterest in the world below. The disciples had heard from the master that it was not for them to know when Jesus himself would restore the kingdom. The temptation was no doubt to sit and wait for him to do so. But the temptation on the opposite extreme was equally invalid. There was no sense in trying to set about the work of establishing the Kingdom without his help as though he were absent and it was now their turn to work. Thus there was the insistence that the disciples would be the witnesses of Jesus throughout the world. But they could not do this until they first received power from on high in the form of the Holy Spirit. They needed this connection to the ascended Lord in order to be able to fulfill their mission. Just as the Spirit drove and directed Jesus in his own life on earth so too was that Spirit meant to guide the Church.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
throughout Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.
We can see that the Church Jesus founded was always meant to be in some sense Pentecostal or charismatic. The Spirit himself was meant to be the source of the power and the vital energy that filled her and made her children effective witnesses. Without the Spirit signs and wonders meant to be evidence for unbelievers would be absent and important roles and ministries would be unfilled. Not only would the Church be missing prophets in such a case she would even by missing the pastors and teachers and evangelists whom the Holy Spirit himself wished to chose and anoint for their tasks. If we ourselves neglect the Holy Spirit in our own lives we risk neglecting many gifts he wants to give us and give others through us. We risk living a dry and boring Christian reality that was never the intention of Jesus himself. He longs to continue to work with us to confirm his word. Will we open ourselves to his presence in our midst?
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