Viri Galilæi, quid statis aspicientes in cælum? “Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven?” (Acts 1:11)
Within the Octave of the Ascension
The sacred liturgy, with that maternal solicitude which distinguishes her every gesture, does not permit so august a mystery as the Ascension of Our Lord to pass in a single day. The whole octave is given over to the contemplation of Christ enthroned at the right hand of the Father, and so on this Thursday — Feria Quinta infra Hebdomadam post Ascensionem — the Church places once again before our eyes the very lessons of the feast itself: the opening of the Acta Apostolorum and the conclusion of the Gospel according to St. Mark. The repetition is no redundancy. As St. Leo the Great teaches in his sermon on the Ascension, quod Redemptoris nostri conspicuum fuit, in sacramenta transivit — “what was visible in our Redeemer has passed over into the sacraments” — and the Church’s daily return to these texts is itself a kind of liturgical mystagogy, leading the faithful ever more deeply into what the eye beheld but once.
The Mass Viri Galilæi takes its name from the Introit drawn from this very Epistle, and the angelic chiding of the apostles becomes the Church’s own gentle admonition to her children: do not stand idle, gazing; the Ascension is a commission as much as a glorification.
The Epistle: De omnibus, o Theophile
St. Luke begins the second of his sacred volumes by binding it to the first: Primum quidem sermonem feci de omnibus, o Theophile, quæ cœpit Iesus facere et docere — “The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, of all things which Jesus began to do and to teach” (Acts 1:1). St. John Chrysostom, in his first homily on the Acts, fastens upon the word cœpit — began. The Gospel records what Jesus began; the Acts will record what He continues to do through His Apostles by the Holy Ghost. The Ascension, then, is not a departure but a transposition of His operation: the Head having entered into glory, the members are now to act in the power of the Head. Non solum facere, sed et docere, observes Chrysostom — both deed and doctrine, for the Lord taught nothing He had not first done, and His preaching was the overflow of His sanctity.
For forty days, per dies quadraginta apparens eis et loquens de regno Dei (Acts 1:3), Our Lord conferred upon the Apostles a final and definitive catechesis. St. Augustine, treating of the number, notes that as the Lord fasted forty days before His public ministry and was forty days tempted in the wilderness, so He spends forty days after His Resurrection in instruction — a symbol, says the Bishop of Hippo, of the whole pilgrim Church, which sojourns in this present age (signified by the number ten, the law) multiplied through the four corners of the world. The Ascension is thus the consummation of a hidden seminary, a final formation of those who shall go forth.
The promise then given — vos autem baptizabimini Spiritu Sancto non post multos hos dies (v. 5) — anchors the octave in its proper trajectory. We are not yet at Pentecost; we stand within the novendialis of the Apostles, those nine days during which they persevered with one mind in prayer with Mary the Mother of Jesus (Acts 1:14). The Ascension is thus liturgically incomplete; it stretches forward to the descent of the Paraclete, even as the Apostles stretched forth in expectation. The Church desires that we, too, should pass these days in that holy cenaculum of the heart, recollected and waiting.
The apostolic question — Domine, si in tempore hoc restitues regnum Israel? (v. 6) — still betrays, even at this late hour, the lingering shadows of a temporal Messianism. The Lord does not rebuke them. He redirects: Non est vestrum nosse tempora vel momenta (v. 7). The Venerable Bede comments that the apostles had not yet been clothed with the full light of the Spirit, and so were yet to be raised above carnal expectation; their question was not malicious but immature. How often this is our own posture before the Divine Majesty — asking when and whither, when the only fitting question is what wouldst Thou have me do. The Lord answers their question with a commission: eritis mihi testes in Jerusalem, et in omni Judæa, et Samaria, et usque ad ultimum terræ (v. 8). Witness, not calculation, is the proper apostolic vocation.
Then comes the moment itself: videntibus illis, elevatus est, et nubes suscepit eum ab oculis eorum (v. 9). St. Gregory the Great, in his twenty-ninth homily on the Gospels, draws out the difference between the Ascension of Christ and the translations of Elias and Henoch: those holy ones were taken up by another power, but Christ ascended suâ virtute — by His own divine might. Sicut Pater suscitat mortuos et vivificat, sic et Filius quos vult vivificat; and as He raised Himself from the tomb, so He ascends to heaven by no foreign agency. The cloud which receives Him is the same cloud which overshadowed Sinai, which dwelt over the tabernacle, which descended upon Thabor — the Shekinah, the visible token of the Divine Presence, now closing the visible economy of the Incarnation.
Two angels, in vestibus albis (v. 10), then deliver the gentle reproof: Viri Galilæi, quid statis aspicientes in cælum? (v. 11). St. John Chrysostom remarks with characteristic shrewdness that the angels call them Galileans — addressing them by their rusticity, that they might know themselves as men, simple and unlettered, upon whom now rests the universal commission. The angels do not chide their wonder but their stasis. To gaze upward is right; to remain immobile is wrong. The promise that follows — sic veniet quemadmodum vidistis eum euntem in cælum — fixes the Ascension as the type of the Parousia: eadem caro, eadem Persona, as the Fathers insist, against every spiritualizing heresy.
The Gospel: Euntes in mundum universum
St. Mark’s concluding pericope opens with an unsparing detail: exprobravit incredulitatem eorum et duritiam cordis (Mark 16:14). The Risen Lord reproves the Eleven for their slowness to believe the witnesses of His Resurrection. The Venerable Bede, in the Catena Aurea, observes that this rebuke was no accident but a providential preparation for their office: those who themselves had to be convinced by hard evidence would the more compassionately bear with the slow faith of those to whom they would preach. St. Gregory the Great supplies the famous and consoling reflection: quod illi tardius crediderunt, non tam illorum infirmitas quam nostra, ut ita dicam, firmitas fuit — “That the disciples were slow to believe was not so much their weakness as our strength; for the Resurrection itself, through their doubts, was made manifest by many proofs, and while we read and acknowledge them, what do we but become firmer through their doubting?” The reluctance of the Apostles is thus, in the providence of God, a buttress to our own faith.
Then follows the great mandate: Euntes in mundum universum, prædicate Evangelium omni creaturæ (v. 15). Universal in extent — omni creaturæ — and universal in command. The Venerable Bede notes that the Evangelist’s reach widens with each Gospel: Mark, who began late, beginning his Gospel at the preaching of John the Baptist, here extends his narrative to the very ends of the earth where the Apostles would sow the seed. St. Gregory the Great inquires into the order: obedientia sequitur præceptum, et signa sequuntur obedientiam. First the precept, then the obedience, and finally the signs. The Lord does not multiply prodigies before the work begins; He confers them upon those who have first set out.
Qui crediderit et baptizatus fuerit, salvus erit; qui vero non crediderit, condemnabitur (v. 16). Here is the forma sacramenti, set in the indissoluble nexus of faith and Baptism. The Council of Trent will later define this against every laxist or Pelagian distortion (Sess. VI, cap. vii; Sess. VII, can. v de baptismo). St. Augustine, treating of the parvuli who cannot yet make an act of personal faith, replies — as Bede summarizes in the Catena — that as infants contract original sin through another (through Adam, and mediately through their parents), so by the faith of the Church and the sponsors they are made partakers of remission in Baptism. The dogmatic structure is firm: fides ex auditu, says St. Paul (Rom. 10:17), and Baptism the gateway to salvation.
The signs which follow believers — casting out devils, speaking with new tongues, taking up serpents, drinking deadly things without harm, laying hands upon the sick — these St. Gregory the Great divides into the literal and the spiritual. They were given visibly in the apostolic age that the Church might be founded; they continue invisibly in every age, for the faithful daily cast out the devils of vice from their hearts, speak the new tongues of charity, tread upon the serpent of concupiscence, and by the imposition of holy admonitions raise the languishing souls of their neighbors. Maiora quippe sunt spiritualia signa quam corporalia, says the Pontiff: quia per illa sanantur corpora, per ista animæ suscitantur — “Spiritual signs are greater than corporal, for by the latter bodies are healed, by the former souls are raised to life.”
Then the great verse: Et Dominus quidem Iesus, postquam locutus est eis, assumptus est in cælum, et sedet a dextris Dei (v. 19). St. Mark’s brevity is theologically dense. The session at the right hand of the Father — sedet, in the perfect tense which signifies a permanent state — declares the divine equality of the Son and the consummation of His priestly oblation. The Epistle to the Hebrews (10:12) will draw out the dogmatic implication: hic autem unam pro peccatis offerens hostiam, in sempiternum sedet in dextera Dei. St. Thomas in the Summa Theologiæ (III, q. 58, a. 1) explains that to sit at the right hand of the Father signifies, according to His divinity, equality of glory with the Father, and according to His humanity, the supreme excellence of the beatific possession above every creature.
The Gospel closes with the most consoling line of all: Illi autem profecti prædicaverunt ubique, Domino cooperante, et sermonem confirmante sequentibus signis (v. 20). Domino cooperante — the Lord cooperating. The Ascension does not signify absence but a new mode of presence. He who is no longer visible according to the flesh is now operative through every Apostolic word, every Sacramental sign, every act of grace in His Mystical Body. As St. Augustine teaches in his sermon on the Ascension, non recessit a nobis, sed ascendit, ut nos pertraheret ad se — “He did not depart from us, but ascended, that He might draw us up to Himself.”
A Synthesis for Meditation
Three threads run through both readings, and the Feria invites us to gather them.
The first is the mystery of the Lord’s exaltation: the same Body that hung upon the Cross and lay in the tomb is now enthroned in glory. The Ascension is the seal of the Resurrection and the præludium of our own glorification, for where the Head has gone, the members are destined to follow. Ubi caput, says the ancient liturgical maxim, ibi et membra.
The second is the commission of the Church: Eritis mihi testes… Euntes in mundum universum. The Ascension does not close the work of redemption but inaugurates its diffusion. Every baptized soul shares, in his measure, in this apostolic vocation. The hierarchical priesthood preaches and sanctifies ex officio; the lay faithful witness ex caritate. None are exempt.
The third is the expectation of the Paraclete and of the Parousia. The angels’ words — sic veniet — and the Lord’s promise — baptizabimini Spiritu Sancto — bracket the entire life of the Church between two comings: that of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, soon to be celebrated, and that of Christ in glory at the end of the age. The whole life of the Christian is lived between these two advents, as in a holy Cenacle.
Practical Application
Three exercises commend themselves on this Feria within the Octave:
First, the recitation of the Ascension Collect, which sums the whole mystery:
Concede, quæsumus, omnipotens Deus, ut, qui hodierna die Unigenitum tuum Redemptorem nostrum ad cælos ascendisse credimus, ipsi quoque mente in cælestibus habitemus. Per eumdem Dominum nostrum…
“Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that we who believe Thine Only-begotten Son, our Redeemer, to have ascended this day into heaven, may ourselves dwell in mind among heavenly things. Through the same Our Lord…”
Second, the novena to the Holy Ghost, which the Church inherits from the Apostles themselves, who erant perseverantes unanimiter in oratione cum mulieribus, et Maria matre Iesu. These nine days between Ascension and Pentecost are the original Novena, and the faithful do well to mark them with deliberate prayer, fasting, and recollection.
Third, a brief examination of conscience under the angelic question: Quid statis aspicientes in cælum? In what particulars of life have I become stationary, gazing without acting? Where has the contemplation of heavenly things been divorced from the apostolic obedience that should flow from it? Faith without works, says St. James, is dead. So too is wonder without witness.
A Closing Prayer
O Lord Jesus Christ, who having accomplished the work of our redemption didst ascend victorious into heaven, leaving Thy Church on earth that she might continue Thy mission until the consummation of the age: grant that we, redeemed by Thy Blood and signed with Thy Spirit, may neither stand idle gazing into heaven nor be so absorbed in earth as to forget our true country. Confirm Thou the word of Thy witnesses with signs following, that all flesh may know that Thou reignest at the right hand of the Father, and that Thou wilt so come as Thou wert seen going into heaven. Who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
Ascendit Deus in jubilatione, et Dominus in voce tubæ, alleluia. (Ps. 46:6)