A World Without the Ascension
The Feast of the Ascension seems on a par with Easter. It gets equal attention in the creeds: “On the third day, he arose from the dead. He ascended into heaven.” It is the first doctrine Jesus preaches upon his Resurrection. He tells Mary Magdalene, “go to my brethren and say to them” – not, “I am risen” – but rather “I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.” (John 20:17) She saw that he had risen. The Lord did not need to tell her that. But He does tell her, as a matter of first importance, that He will ascend.
Logically, if the Lord did not ascend to Heaven, if Heaven was not His goal and home, then his resurrection would have been “for this world” solely, just like the resurrection of Lazarus, and he would have died once more. That is, the resurrection which we celebrate at Easter by definition is a resurrection for someplace other than this current world as it is.
Not unexpectedly, the Eastern Churches use apt language to signify the mystery’s nature. They call it the episôzomenê (emphasis on the penult), “the day on which our salvation attains its perfection.” If to deny a thing’s perfection is to deny the good of that thing, then to deny the Ascension is to deny the goodness of Easter.
The Church accordingly has given the Feast the highest importance. “It is one of the Ecumenical feasts ranking with the feasts of the Passion, of Easter and of Pentecost among the most solemn in the calendar,” says the Catholic Encyclopedia. By the time of St. Augustine that saint could say “this day is being celebrated all over the world,” a sign of its great antiquity.
The Ascension was deemed so important that Pentecost could be assimilated to it: the Council of Elvira (c. 300 AD) condemned the apparently common practice then of celebrating Pentecost along with the Ascension on the 40th day after Easter, instead of doing so separately on the 50th day.
Canny exegetes have pointed out that the nine days during which Mary prayed with the Apostles in the upper room between the Ascension and Pentecost constituted the very first novena. The feast of the Ascension, therefore, memorializes the beginning of a special time of prayer in the church.
Pope Leo XIII, doing more than notice the fact, “decreed and commanded” that “throughout the whole Catholic Church, this year and in every subsequent year, a Novena shall take place before Whit-Sunday, in all parish churches, and also, if the local Ordinaries think fit, in other churches and oratories.”
The period was a rich time of grace in his view. Therefore, he granted “in perpetuity, from the Treasury of the Church,” a plenary indulgence to anyone who during this time, either publicly or privately, offered prayers to the Holy Spirit (while satisfying the usual conditions: encyclical letter, Divinum illud munus).
