Published in the bulletin of Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Knoxville, TN, on the 2nd Sunday of Easter.
My dear Parishioners,
Peace! The sixth article of the Apostle’s Creed is “Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven, He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” There are three (3) In Brief passages in the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding this article of the Creed. The following is a reflection on article 665.
For forty (40) days after His glorious resurrection Jesus showed Himself to His disciples (Acts 1:3; 1 Corinthians 15:6). Jesus’ farewell address to the Apostles occurred on the fortieth day after His resurrection. At the conclusion of Jesus’ forty (40) days of preaching after His resurrection He went up to heaven in His human body as the Apostles looked on (cf. Acts 1:10-11). In His Ascension to the Father’s right hand in Heaven, Jesus brings our humanity into the presence of the Father (cf. Hebrews 1:13; Revelation 3:21).
When it came time to replace Judas who had betrayed Christ Jesus with a kiss for thirty (30) pieces of silver (cf. Matthew 26:14-16, 25, 47-49; Luke 22:48), the requirements which Matthias met was to have been a witness of the public life and ministry of Jesus from the Baptism at the Jordan River through the ascension (which includes seeing the risen Lord) (cf. Acts 1:20-23). Jesus’ ascension above all the heavens is contrasted with His descent first into the lower parts of the Earth (cf. Ephesians 4:9-10) which the Creed treats in the fifth article: “He descended into Hell.”
In His divinity, the eternal Son never “left” Heaven. Because of the omnipresence of God, there is nowhere where He is not. But because of the Incarnation, because of Jesus’ human body which makes Him like us in all ways but sin, space and time are a part of our faith. In His Ascension Jesus bodily left this Earth and lead us beyond our own horizons. This entry of Jesus’ humanity into the celestial or heavenly realm is definitive. This is not to deny that He will be coming back, He will, as judge of the living and the dead (cf. John 5:22, 30; 8:16, 26; Acts 10:42; 17:31; Romans 2:16), but as an assurance of His victory over the cross and the grave.
We do not know the day nor the hour when the Lord Jesus will come again in glory but we do know that He will come again and we are to be ready (cf. Matthew 24:36; Romans 13:11).
The Apostles and the disciples were able to see and touch the risen Lord Jesus after His resurrection before His Ascension. But with His Ascension the risen Lord Jesus changes His relationship with us by reminding us more of His divinity by remaining with us only in the Sacrament of the Altar and in His mystical body, Mother Church. Had the risen Lord Jesus stayed on the Earth indefinitely the theological virtue of Faith would be non-existent in that we could behold the Lord Himself.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr