The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

06-01-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Albert

The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord commemorates the fortieth day after the Resurrection when Jesus ascended body and soul into Heaven and took His seat at the right hand of His Father. Only Jesus and His Blessed Mother have entered into the glories of Heaven, body and soul. Jesus' Ascension implies that He did so by His own authority and power. The Blessed Virgin Mary's Assumption implies that she entered Heaven, body and soul, by God's power and not her own.

The Ascension marks the completion of Jesus' earthly mission. He first united His divine nature with human nature through the Incarnation at the moment of the Annunciation. As Jesus fulfilled His mission through life, His learned knowledge grew until it was perfected in human form. it was never imperfect in the sense of sin, but only in the sense of growth through human experience and human love.

The Resurrection of Jesus brought human experiences and knowledge to perfection. His free embrace of the Cross manifested the perfection of divine love in human form. Today we commemorate the fact Jesus took His perfected human nature into the Beatific Vision, enabling humanity itself to follow. The Blessed Virgin Mary was the first to do so given her sinless state.

The final stage of the salvation of humanity will take place when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. At that time, every human body will rise, will endure the final purification and transformation and will share in the new and resurrected state in which the faithful will be able to stand, body and soul, before the Most Holy Trinity and experience the fullness of the Beatific Vision forever. What Jesus has already accomplished in His human form is what we look forward to in hope at the end of time.

Christ's bodily Ascension foreshadows our own entrance into Heaven not simply as souls, after our death, but as glorified bodies, after the resurrection of the dead at the Final judgement. in redeeming mankind, Christ not only offered salvation to our souls but began the restoration of the material world itself to the glory that God intended before Adam's fall.

Today it is meant to celebrate the completion of the work of our salvation, the pledge of our glorification with Christ and His entry into Heaven with our human nature glorified.