I. The Ascension Completes Our Faith in Him,
Who Was God As Well as Man.
The mystery of our salvation, dearly-beloved, which the Creator of the
universe valued at the price of His blood, has now been carried out under
conditions of humiliation from the day of His bodily birth to the end of
His Passion. And although even in "the form of a slave" many signs of Divinity
have beamed out, yet the events of all that period served particularly
to show the reality of His assumed Manhood. But after the Passion, when
the chains of death were broken, which had exposed its own strength by
attacking Him, Who was ignorant of sin, weakness was turned into power,
mortality into eternity, contumely into glory, which the Lord Jesus Christ
showed by many clear proofs in the sight of many, until He carried even
into heaven the triumphant victory which He had won over the dead. As therefore
at the Easter commemoration, the Lord's Resurrection was the cause of our
rejoicing; so the subject of our present gladness is His Ascension, as
we commemorate and duly venerate that day on which the Nature of our humility
in Christ was raised above all the host of heaven, over all the ranks of
angels, beyond the height of all powers, to sit with God the Father. On
which Providential order of events we are founded and built up, that God's
Grace might become more wondrous, when, notwithstanding the removal from
men's sight of what was rightly felt to command their awe, faith did not
fail, hope did not waver, love did not grow cold. For it is the strength
of great minds and the light of firmly-faithful souls, unhesitatingly to
believe what is not seen with the bodily sight, and there to fix one's
affections whither you cannot direct your gaze. And whence should this
Godliness spring up in our hearts, or how should a man be justified by
faith, if our salvation rested on those things only which lie beneath our
eyes? Hence our Lord said to him who seemed to doubt of Christ's Resurrection,
until he had tested by sight and touch the traces of His Passion in His
very Flesh, "because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are,
they who have not seen and yet have believed1 ."
II. The Ascension Renders Our Faith More Excellent and
Stronger.
In order, therefore, dearly-beloved, that we may be capable of this
blessedness, when all things were fulfilled which concerned the Gospel
preaching and the mysteries of the New Testament, our Lord Jesus Christ,
on the fortieth day after the Resurrection in the presence of the disciples,
was raised into heaven, and terminated His presence with us in the body,
to abide on the Father's right hand until the times Divinely fore-ordained
for multiplying the sons of the Church are accomplished, and He comes to
judge the living and the dead in the same flesh in which He ascended. And
so that which till then was visible of our Redeemer was changed into a
sacramental presence2 , and that faith might be more excellent and stronger,
sight gave way to doctrine, the authority of which was to be accepted by
believing hearts enlightened with rays from above.
III. The Marvellous Effects of This Faith on All.
This Faith, increased by the Lord's Ascension and established by the
gift of the Holy Ghost, was not terrified by bonds, imprisonments, banishments,
hunger, fire, attacks by wild beasts, refined torments of cruel persecutors.
For this Faith throughout the world not only men, but even women, not only
beardless boys, but even tender maids, fought to the shedding of their
blood. This Faith cast out spirits, drove off sicknesses, raised the dead:
and through it the blessed Apostles themselves also, who after being confirmed
by so many miracles and instructed by so many discourses, had yet been
panic-stricken by the horrors of the Lord's Passion and had not accepted
the truth of His resurrection without hesitation, made such progress after
the Lord's Ascension that everything which had previously filled them with
fear was turned into joy. For they had lifted the whole contemplation of
their mind to the Godhead of Him that sat at the Father's right hand, and
were no longer hindered by the barrier of corporeal sight from directing
their minds' gaze to That Which had never quitted the Father's side in
descending to earth, and had not forsaken the disciples in ascending to
heaven.
IV. His Ascension Refines Our Faith : the Ministering
of Angels to Hint Shows the Extent of His Authority.
The Son of Man and Son of God, therefore, dearly-beloved, then attained
a more excellent and holier fame, when He betook Himself back to the glory
of the Father's Majesty, and in an ineffable manner began to be nearer
to the Father in respect of His Godhead, after having become farther away
in respect of His manhood. A better instructed faith then began to draw
closer to a conception of the Son's equality with the Father without the
necessity of handling the corporeal substance in Christ, whereby He is
less than the Father, since, while the Nature of the glorified Body still
remained the faith of believers was called upon to touch not with the hand
of flesh, but with the spiritual understanding the Only-begotten, Who was
equal with the Father. Hence comes that which the Lord said after His Resurrection,
when Mary Magdalene, representing the Church, hastened to approach and
touch Him: "Touch Me not, for I have not yet ascended to My Father3 :"
that is, I would not have you come to Me as to a human body, nor yet recognize
Me by fleshly perceptions: I put thee off for higher things, I prepare
greater things for thee: when I have ascended to My Father, then thou shall
handle Me more perfectly and truly, for thou shall grasp what thou canst
not touch and believe what thou canst not see. But when the disciples'
eyes followed the ascending Lord tO heaven with upward gaze of earnest
wonder, two angels stood by them in raiment shining with wondrous brightness,
who also said, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven? This
Jesus Who was taken up from you into heaven shall so come as ye saw Him
going into heaven4 ." By which words all the sons of the Church were taught
to believe that Jesus Christ will come visibly in the same Flesh wherewith
He ascended, and not to doubt that all things are subjected to Him on Whom
the ministry of angels had waited from the first beginning of His Birth.
For, as an angel announced to the blessed Virgin that Christ should be
conceived by the Holy Ghost, so the voice of heavenly beings sang of His
being born of the Virgin also to the shepherds. As messengers from above
were the first to attest His having risen from the dead, so the service
of angels was employed to foretell His coming in very Flesh to judge the
world, that we might understand what great powers will come with Him as
Judge, when such great ones ministered to Him even in being judged.
V. We Must Despise Earthly Things and Rise to Things Above,
Especially by Active Works of Mercy and Love.
And so, dearly-beloved, let us rejoice with spiritual joy, and let us
with gladness pay God worthy thanks and raise our hearts' eyes unimpeded
to those heights where Christ is. Minds that have heard the call to be
uplifted must not be pressed down by earthly affections5 , they that are
fore-ordained to things eternal must not be taken up with the things that
perish; they that have entered on the way of Truth must not be entangled
in treacherous snares, and the faithful must so take their course through
these temporal things as to remember that they are sojourning in the vale
of this world, in which, even though they meet with some attractions, they
must not sinfully embrace them, but bravely pass through them. For to this
devotion the blessed Apostle Peter arouses us, and entreating us with that
loving eagerness which he conceived for feeding Christ's sheep by the threefold
profession of love for the Lord, says, "dearly-beloved, I beseech you,
as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against
the soul6 ." But for whom do fleshly pleasures wage war, ifnot for the
devil, whose delight it is to fetter souls that strive after things above,
with the enticements of corruptible good things, and to draw them away
from those abodes from which he himself has been banished? Against his
plots every believer must keep careful watch that he may crush his foe
on the side whence the attack is made. And there is no more powerful weapon,
dearly-beloved, against the devil's wiles than kindly mercy and bounteous
charity, by which every sin is either escaped or vanquished. But this lofty
power is not attained until that which is opposed to it be overthrown.
And what so hostile to mercy and works of charity as avarice from the root
of which spring all evils7 ? And unless it be destroyed by lack of nourishment,
there must needs grow in the ground of that heart in which this evil weed
has taken root, the thorns and briars of vices rather than any seed of
true goodness. Let us then, dearly-beloved, resist this pestilential evil
and "follow after charity8 ," without which no virtue can flourish, that
by this path of love whereby Christ came down to us, we too may mount up
to Him, to Whom with God the Father and the Holy Spirit is honour and glory
for ever and ever. Amen.
