New PageThe Solemnity of Our Lord’s Ascension

The Ascension of Our Lord to the right side of His Father in heaven, is the climax of His earthly existence.

   After His resurrection He said to Mary Magdalene, ‘I have not yet ascended to My Father.’ Now the time has come for the glory that is His right as Lord of all creation, and conqueror of sin and death, to be given to Him.

     Of course, Our Lord has never ceased to be God, but throughout His earthly life His divinity has been hidden beneath His visible human nature. Now that human nature, too, is taken up into heaven to share in divine glory for all eternity. Hence the prayer of the Collect, that  ‘where the glory of the Head has gone before, the hope of the Body (that is, the Church) may be called to join Him.’

     We also take to mind the words of the angels in today’s Entrance Antiphon, that He will return one day to the earth even as the Apostles have watched Him go, that is, “in glory, to judge the living and the dead”, as we say in the Creed.           

~   Fr. Paul Dobson