“And the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God.” — Mark 16:19 (Douay-Rheims)
Forty days after the Resurrection, the Church lifts her eyes upward. On the Feast of the Ascension, the Sacred Liturgy invites us not into a mournful farewell, as some sentimental readings of the day might suggest, but into a holy astonishment: the very flesh that was scourged and pierced is now enthroned above the choirs of angels. The Word made flesh, who descended into the depths of our misery, has carried our nature into the heights of glory. This is the mystery the two Gospel passages place before us — St. Luke’s solemn account in Acts 1:1–11, and the apostolic conclusion of St. Mark in 16:14–20.
The Witness of Acts: A Promise, A Cloud, and a Question
St. Luke begins the Acts of the Apostles by recalling his Gospel — “all things which Jesus began to do and to teach” (Acts 1:1). The choice of verb is deliberate: Christ began. What He inaugurated in His earthly ministry, He continues in His Church. The Ascension is not a conclusion, but a transition; not a withdrawal, but a new mode of presence. As St. Augustine remarks with characteristic precision, “He did not leave heaven when He came down to us; nor did He withdraw from us when He went up again into heaven” (Sermon 263). The Ascension does not put distance between Christ and His Bride. It universalizes His presence, freeing it from the constraints of one road in Galilee.
Before His departure, the Lord gives two charges. First, He commands the Apostles to wait in Jerusalem “for the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4) — the Holy Ghost, soon to descend at Pentecost. Second, He widens their horizon: “you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The Ascension is thus oriented forward — to the gift of the Spirit and to the mission of the Church.
Then comes the moment itself: “And when he had said these things, while they looked on, he was raised up: and a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). The cloud is no mere meteorological detail. It is the shekinah, the cloud of the divine presence that filled the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the Temple of Solomon. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Fourteenth Catechetical Lecture, dwells lovingly on this image, teaching that Christ ascends not as one being lifted by another, but by His own divine power, returning to the glory that was His before the world was made.
And there, suspended between earth and heaven, the Apostles are met by two men in white garments who pose the great question of the feast: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven?” (Acts 1:11). This question is not a rebuke of contemplation; the Fathers are unanimous that gazing upon Christ is the soul’s highest occupation. Rather, it is a summons to mission. The same Jesus who has ascended will come again in the same manner. The Christian, therefore, lives between two comings — sustained by memory of the first, laboring in light of the second.
The Witness of St. Mark: Reproof, Commission, and Cooperation
St. Mark’s account is briefer but no less rich. It opens with a striking detail: the Risen Lord “upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen him after he was risen again” (Mark 16:14). Before commissioning His Apostles, Christ corrects them. St. Gregory the Great, in his twenty-ninth homily on the Gospels, draws a piercing lesson from this: the very men who would soon convert nations had first to be converted from their own slowness of heart. Grace does not bypass our wounds; it heals them and then commissions them.
The commission follows immediately: “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). The Church’s missionary character is not an optional add-on to her interior life. It flows directly from the Ascension. Because Christ now reigns at the right hand of the Father, His Kingdom must be proclaimed to every nation under heaven. St. John Chrysostom, in his homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, marvels at the audacity of this command given to twelve unlettered Galileans — and at the splendor of its fulfillment.
Then comes the soteriological clarity that the modern ear so often resists: “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mark 16:16). The Fathers refuse to soften this. Faith and the Sacrament of Baptism are the appointed gates by which the Ascended Lord brings souls into His Kingdom. St. Augustine, in his treatise On Baptism Against the Donatists, anchors the necessity of Baptism precisely here, in the words of the Risen and soon-to-Ascend Lord.
The chapter closes with one of the most quietly beautiful sentences in the New Testament: “And they going forth preached every where: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed” (Mark 16:20). The Ascension does not leave the Apostles alone. The Lord works with them — cooperante Domino, in the Vulgate. St. Bede the Venerable, commenting on this verse, observes that this divine cooperation has never ceased: every true preaching of the Gospel, every conversion, every miracle of grace in the life of a soul, is the Ascended Christ at work in His Mystical Body.
The Heart of the Mystery: Our Nature Enthroned
To grasp why the Ascension is a feast of joy rather than sorrow, we must turn to St. Leo the Great, whose two sermons on the Ascension are among the treasures of the Latin patrimony. He writes: “The Ascension of Christ is our own elevation. Where the glory of the Head has gone before, there hope is summoned for the body” (Sermon 73). The flesh assumed in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, glorified in the Resurrection, is now seated at the right hand of the Father. Our nature — wounded, redeemed, transfigured — has been carried beyond the stars.
St. Augustine echoes this with his customary boldness: “He ascended; but we also ascended in Him, by the love which the Holy Ghost pours forth in our hearts” (Sermon 263). The Ascension is therefore not only Christ’s triumph but ours, by anticipation. It is the pledge that our pilgrimage has a homeland, and that homeland is no abstraction. It is a Person, enthroned and waiting.
Living the Ascension
How then ought we to keep this feast? Three suggestions, drawn from the tradition:
First, lift up your heart. The ancient acclamation of the Mass, Sursum corda, finds its perfect liturgical season in these days between Ascension and Pentecost. Make a deliberate act each day of turning the mind upward — not in escape from earthly duty, but in ordering all duty toward its true end.
Second, pray for the Holy Ghost. The Apostles, with Our Lady, spent nine days in prayer in the Upper Room. This is the original novena. The traditional Pentecost Novena, beginning on the day after Ascension, is one of the most ancient and indulgenced devotions of the Church. Take it up.
Third, take up the Great Commission in your own state of life. You may not be sent to “the uttermost part of the earth,” but you have a parish, a family, a workplace, a circle of friends. The Ascended Lord still works with those who preach Him — in word when prudent, in example always.
A Closing Prayer
Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who do believe Thine Only-Begotten Son, our Redeemer, to have this day ascended into the heavens, may ourselves dwell in mind amid heavenly things. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
— Collect for the Feast of the Ascension, Roman Missal (1962)
If you wish to go deeper into the mysteries of Christ’s earthly mission and heavenly glory, the Sacred Liturgy learning path explores the theology of the liturgical seasons, including the rich Ascensiontide propers of the Traditional Roman Rite. Alternatively, the Theology and Doctrine path treats Christology in the order of St. Thomas — from the Incarnation to the Session at the Father’s right hand.