Has Jesus left us?

By Fr. Vincent Hawkswell

This Sunday we celebrate Christ's ascension. "As they were watching, He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight," we hear in the First Reading.

Christ's Body had been glorified when He rose from the dead, as was proved by its new, supernatural characteristics, like its ability to be present how and when He willed. However, during the 40 days after His resurrection, as He ate and drank with His disciples and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, His glory remained veiled under the appearance of ordinary humanity.

This period ended with His ascension, "the irreversible entry of His humanity into divine glory," as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, symbolized by the cloud and by heaven, where He is now seated "at God's right hand."

Has He, then, left us? Is His incarnation now a mere episode in history, except for our belief that He will come again?

No, says the Catechism. By His ascension, His return to His Father, Christ gave us access to the Father too. Now we can live in confidence that we shall go where He has preceded us.

Left to our own natural powers, human beings do not have access to the Father's house, to God's life and happiness. Only the One Who came from the Father can return to the Father: namely Jesus. "No one has ascended into heaven but He Who descended from heaven, the Son of Man," Christ told Nicodemus.

That "ascent" began with His being "lifted up" on the cross, from where He promised to "draw all men" to Himself. In His crucifixion, He sealed His new and eternal covenant with us by His Blood, when He, as that covenant's one priest, sacrificed Himself, as victim, to God the Father.

In His ascension, He, as priest, entered not into a sanctuary made by human hands, as the Jewish high priests had done for centuries, but into heaven itself, to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. There He permanently exercises His priesthood, for He lives to make intercession for those who draw near to God through Him.

Father's 'right hand'

We say in the Creed that Christ is now seated "at the right hand of the Father." By this phrase, we mean the glory and honour of divinity, where He Who exists as Son of God before all ages, of one Being with the Father, is seated bodily since He became incarnate and His Body was glorified.

Being "seated at the Father's right hand" signifies the inauguration of the Messiah's kingdom, the fulfilment of the prophet Daniel's vision: "To Him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed."

Christ's ascension into heaven signifies His participation, in His humanity, in God's power and authority. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me," He says in the Gospel Reading, immediately before His ascension. He possesses all power in heaven and on earth, for God has put all things under His feet.

"God put this power to work in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come," St. Paul says in the Second Reading.

Since the ascension God's plan has entered into its fulfilment. There will be no "new age." Already the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably underway. In fact, in a certain real way, it is already here, for Christ continues to dwell on earth in the Church. She is already endowed with holiness that is real, although imperfect, for she is Christ's Body, and her Head, from Whom she is inseparable, is in heaven, at God's right hand.

He will come again

Immediately after we say in the Creed that Christ "is seated at the right hand of the Father," we say that "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." Before His ascension, as we hear in the First Reading, Christ said that the time had not yet come for the glorious establishment of the messianic kingdom which, according to the prophets, was to bring justice, love, and peace. The present time is characterized by "the Spirit" and "witness," but also distress and struggle with evil.

Before the end, the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. This persecution will take the form of a religious deception offering us an apparent solution to our problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.

It is already visible in the world every time humans claim to find that messianic hope within history, as "New Age" proponents try to persuade us.

The truth is that the Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through a final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in His death and resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will take the form of the last judgement, after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.

In the meantime, we need not fear, for He, the Lord, is with us always, until the end of the world. Alleluia!