Ascension-tide: A Disappearing Season

Illustration: 'The Ascension' by W. A. Muller (1746-1816)

These days, the feast of the Ascension seems to be passed over even though, in the old service books it is a feast of the highest rank. I suppose that the first problem is that it falls on a Thursday, which gets it at crossed-purposes with the 'only holyday is Sunday' culture of American Puritanism, and then the polyester liturgical iconoclasts of the 1960s decided that Ascensiontide - the ten days between Ascension Day and Whitsunday (Pentecost) should no longer be kept as a separate season but should be subsumed into Eastertide. In other words, it has been reformed into insignificance except in those churches which use the tradition one-year Eucharistic lectionary.

This is a pity, because Ascension has three important things to teach us.

Firstly, it is the equal and opposite feast to the Annunciation. At the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she was to bare the Christ. The word was to be made flesh on earth. The Ascension commemorates that 'flesh' that human nature being taken up into heaven to reign at the right hand of the Father. It celebrates the glorification of our redeemed humanity.

Secondly, it marks the closure of Christ's direct earthly ministry. Hereafter, it will be conducted through Church once the Holy Spirit has fallen in Christ's apostles and disciples at Pentecost.

Thirdly, it says something very important about humanity. If God deemed our humanity important enough to redeem it through no less a person that His eternal Word, then humanity itself has an importance that is more than evolutionary. Humanity was made in God's image and likeness, that likeness was fatally marred in the Fall, and restored in and through Christ. The implication is, therefore, the humanity is not a throw away commodity and that the Gospel requires us to protect the value and dignity of human life from conception to natural death.

If we want to recover a truly Christian understanding of man, we need to give the message of the Ascension its full weight in our theological thinking. Man is not simply a higher ape, but rather a being created in the image of God, an image lost in Adam, but restored in Christ for those who believe and are baptized. Our treatment of our fellow men needs to be rooted not in pragmatism, but in the incarnation which teaches us the true value and purpose of man under God.