The Ascension of the Lord (2025)
The Easter Season is something of a mystery for most Christians. We don’t quite know what to do with it. This is especially true, when we compare the Fifty Days of Easter to the Forty Days of Lent!
During Lent, parishes and schools have special programming to help us grow in our disciple-commitment and learn more about our faith; there are special collections for charities and opportunities for Lenten giving; we have additional times for confession and other devotions like the Stations of the Cross or Eucharistic adoration.
We have fish fries.
There is a fervor to the Season of Lent that we don’t find in the days of Easter. And this is a shame because, in a very real way, this most important time of the Church Year.
When Easter Sunday comes, we sing our Alleluias and we proclaim, “Christ is Risen!” And that’s where most stay. But then, as the Easter Season continues, things begin to become murky… the Day of Resurrection fades into memory and we’re left with seven weeks with sprinkling rites and a Paschal Candle, but we the question arises: “What are supposed to be celebrating during the Fifty Days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost?”
To answer that, let’s go back to that Easter proclamation: “Christ is Risen!” As I said… that’s where must of stay. But the Easter Season invites us to a new perspective by challenging us to not simply proclaim “Christ is Risen,” but rather, to proclaim, “Christ is Risen…and…!”
It doesn’t take Fifty Days to simply declare “Christ is Risen!” We do that well enough on Easter Sunday and the Octave of Easter. But “Christ is Risen… and…!”… well, that’s a whole other story.
That “and” allows our celebration of Easter becomes something open-ended and expansive. It pulls us into a place of mystery by reminding us that the Lord’s Death and Resurrection, Ascension and Glorification are always-unfolding reality that is always inviting us deeper as disciples and people of prayer. And today’s celebration of the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is essential part of the Easter Mystery.
I admit that when I was younger, the Ascension didn’t much to me. It was just one of those events in the life of Jesus that we celebrated because that’s what we do! However, as I’ve grown older, the mystery of the Lord’s Ascension into heaven has come to mean much more to me than had. I think that this is, in large part, because of my greater appreciation for the Easter Season and the emphasis on discipleship and mission that we find in these great Fifty Days.
This feast reminds me a scene in Marilyn Robinson’s novel, Gilead, in which the aging Reverend John Ames looks back on a life of pastoral service, love, loss, faith, and hope. He tells his young son:
Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time. For example, whenever I take a child into my arms to be baptized, I am, so to speak, comprehended in the experience more fully, having seen more of life, knowing better what it means to affirm the sacredness of the human creature. I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect.
Living into the Mystery of the Resurrection of Christ during this holy days expands our vision precisely because we remember and in remembering we become. And the stories of our spiritual ancestors that we hear in the New Testament shows us how that expanding vision shaped the Early Church.
Think about it… after Jesus was not longer physically present to them, his followers—including his mother and the Apostles—had to discern—(had to make sense of)—what his life, death, resurrection, and ascension revealed about who Jesus was, as well as what God was asking of each of them. And their experience of Jesus’ return to the Father—of his ascension into Heaven—was one of those visions “that come to us only in memory, in retrospect,” just like the experience of Jesus’ resurrection could only be understood after the disciples lived their Easter faith through years of praying, preaching, communion, fidelity, and suffering.
When we think about it in this way, we see that the Solemnity of the Ascension is a celebration of two promises.
First, Jesus has promised that he will send us the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to guide and sustain the growth of the Church.
Beyond this, the Ascension also contains a promise about what is now made possible for us in Christ. This is why the liturgy presents for us these words from the Letter to the Ephesians:
May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call,
what are the riches of glory
in his inheritance among the holy ones,
and what is the surpassing greatness of his power
for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might. (Ephesians 1:18-19).
Christ is Risen … and… today’s celebration challenges us to live into this promise.
The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord reminds us that Jesus disappeared from the disciples’ physical sight so that he might become more present to the eyes of their hearts. It is a time to celebrate the mysterious reality of Christ’s abiding presence among us, here and now.
The invitation for us on this feast is that we foster that same spirit of discernment that those first followers of Jesus practiced as they gradually came to understand who Jesus was and could be for them… the vision that came to them in memory, in retrospect.
Their vision of the glorified Lord, a promise of future glory, is something to be realized and lived here and now.
Gladden us with holy joys, almighty God,
and make us rejoice with devout thanksgiving,
for the Ascension of Christ your Son
is our exaltation,
and, where the Head has gone before in glory,
the Body is called to follow in hope.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
Homily prepared for Ss. Peter and Paul Parish and Old St. Mary’s Parish in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
