In May, the Church celebrates the Ascension. Ascension Day often has seemed to me to be an afterthought, coming after the wild celebration of Easter with its Sunday morning finery, decorated eggs, rousing celebratory anthems, and the return of loud “Alleluias.”
However, Michael Casey, in his book Grace: On the Journey to God, states that “the mystery of Christ’s life that is the center of [one’s] spirituality is the Ascension.” He goes on by saying that Bernard of Clairvaux saw the Resurrection not merely as a return to life—as was the case with Lazarus—but as a transitus, passing into a different mode of being. The Ascension is the transition from an existence anchored in our earthly spatiotemporal continuum, or as Casey puts it, “Jesus is now.”
St. Leo, in his second sermon for the Ascension, said, “Just as the Lord did not depart from the Father when he descended, so he did not depart from his disciples when he ascended. . . Christ is now more present to us in mystery than he ever was in history.”
In Chapter 7 of his Rule, Benedict posits that we must—following the story of Jacob—erect our own ladder to heaven, which is our life in the world. On it we descend by self-exaltation and ascend by humility.
Our reassurance is that we are not alone on this spiritual journey. Because of the Ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is present with us on this ladder of life, just as present to us today as he was to the disciples on the days after the Resurrection.
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M. Casey, Grace. (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2018), 195.
Improbable Benedictine 