Paschal Mysteries
If you go to Walsingham and you decide to visit the Anglican Shrine, you will see, in one of the chapels, two feet sticking out of the ceiling. This is the chapel of the Ascension. After Jesus was resurrected, he walked on this earth for 40 more days. On the fortieth day Jesus ascended into Heaven to take his seat at the right hand of the Father. The Solemnity of the Ascension, which we are celebrating this Thursday and which is a holy day of obligation, commemorates and relives this event.
The Church speaks of the Paschal Mysteries as the key moments of our faith: these are Jesus’ Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven. At the Ascension, the cycle of Jesus’ earthly existence comes to an end. However Jesus leaving this world doesn’t mean that he abandoned his disciples. As our Lord himself said in the Gospel of John, it was necessary for him to go to the Father if we were to receive another counsellor who would remain with us forever. This other counsellor is the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Person of the Trinity that gives supernatural life to the Church. The Ascension is the prelude and the precondition to Pentecost.
A helpful way to understand the relationship between Ascension and Pentecost is to consider the Eucharistic Prayer during Mass. In the course of the Eucharistic prayer the priest invokes the Holy Spirit asking him to come down to sanctify and to consecrate our offering of the bread and the wine. This invocation is known as epiclesis. The actual consecration happens later through the words of institution—take and eat … this is my body … drink … this is my blood. Similarly, the Ascension can be regarded as the moment when Jesus goes to the Father to invoke the descent of the Holy Spirit on his disciples, while Pentecost is the moment when the Holy Spirit actually descended on the Twelve. This is what we celebrate on the Solemnity of the Ascension: Jesus’ invocation of the Holy Spirit on our behalf, the greatest act of epiclesis in history.
Prayer for Eastern Christians
On this annual International Day of Prayer for Eastern Christians, we pray in solidarity with our Christian brothers and sisters of the East, especially in the Holy Land and Ukraine. We ask the Lord to sustain them, many of whom are suffering persecution, displacement, and discrimination, for their faith in the Risen Christ. We pray that stability and peace may flourish in their lands; the place where the Gospel was first heard and proclaimed, the origins of monastic life, and in the unbroken lived tradition of our common Christian faith. Amen.
