Undusted Texts

"Olivet, Olivet!  Where heaven robbed us And stole our Christ, and sailed Him to the sky!" His cloudy chariots snatched Him from us in a whirlwind of glory, and the Apostles were left, like Elisha, bereft—yet, like Elisha, they were to receive a mantle, and a double portion of glory. As Christ "suspended" His glory during His lifetime, and suspended His "place of glory" before the Ascension, so, too, the glory of the Apostles is suspended.  It is the shortest suspension of these: a mere ten days, compared to the forty days of the Ascension, the thirty-three years of Christ's life, or the many decades of Mary Magdalene's .  Yet it is a suspension, and painful one, nonetheless, that wait until they would "receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon" them (Acts 1:8). In those ten days, when they were "packed and shuttered...in utter beggary, / Behind the thin doors of the Cenacle," perhaps, once again, with the "doors locked f...

         After a thirty-three year trip, with a detour to Hell, the truly prodigal Son now returns to the Father.  (For “prodigal” does not mean “wicked’ or “wandering,” but “lavish in spending,” and Jesus was truly lavish in grace.)  He Who departed from the heavenly courts in order to become man has now ascended back to His home. This is a simple way to describe today, but too simple, and so simple as to be wrong.  “Does He abandon the cherubic throne if He receives worldly birth?” 1   No, He does not: in His fleshy birth, He is still with His Father, and even “when Your body was in the tomb and Your soul in Hades, when You were in paradise with the thief, You were also seated upon the throne with the Father and the Holy Spirit.” 2   (How does that ever-presence in heaven mesh with His declaration of abandonment by the Father on the Cross?  A harder question, one that we won’t tackle now.) Not only did He not fully depart—for ...

  Ascension Icon by Andrei Rublev (late 14th - early 15th century). The Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ is traditionally celebrated, following the detail of Acts 1:3, on the Thursday 40 days after Pascha (Easter), which was last Thursday, though most Latin Rite dioceses (at least in the U.S., if not in other countries as well) transfer the celebration of this feast to the next Sunday, which is today.  In Greek, this feast is called 'Η Αναληψις : analepsis means a "taking up," although the term is used in narrative analysis (of films, novels, and other works) to indicate a flashback.  The events of this feast are outlined in Mark, Luke, and Acts: "So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into Heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God" (Mk 16:19). "Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His hands He blessed them.  While He blessed them, He parted from them, and was carried up into Heaven" (...