"He Ascended into Heaven"

The Ascension, Rabula Gospels (6th c., Syriac)

“God has gone up with a shout,

the LORD with the sound of the ram's-horn.”

— Psalm 47:5

Christ our God “has gone up with a shout” (Ps. 47:5).  He went up with a shout when “the Father of glory”—his Father and our Father, his God and our God (Jn. 20:17)—raised him in the power of the Spirit and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph. 1:17, 20–21).  Jesus the Messiah, the King of glory, lives and reigns over the nations.  Seated at the Father’s right hand, he is destroying “every ruler and every authority and every power,” subduing all his enemies until even death is destroyed (1 Cor. 15:24–26).  His reign is not like that of the nations, for he reigns as the Lamb who was slain.    He reigns over the powers, because “all things have been created through him and for him” and because “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them,” triumphing over them in his cross (Col. 1:16; 2:15).  His weakness is mightier than the nations, who display only an empty simulacrum of strength.  He is “mighty in battle” (Ps. 24:8), trampling down death by death.

Christ has gone up with a shout, that those who believe might know “the immeasurable greatness” of God’s power for us (Eph. 1:19).  He returned to the Father that he might pour out on his church the Gift, the promised Holy Spirit.  He fills his church, which is his body, with his Spirit, “the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people” (1:14).  He pours out his Spirit as the pledge that we are, with Christ, children of God and joint heirs of his kingdom (Rom. 8:16–17).  The Spirit bears witness that Christ, who “ascended in the flesh to the bodiless Father,” has lifted up all our humanity and brought it to his Father.*  Christ sends the Spirit “that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.”†

Christ has gone up with a shout, bearing our humanity in his body into the life of the Triune Lord, and giving the Spirit that his members might bear his life in their bodies.  Through the gift of the Spirit they share in his life.  He gives them to become a people capable of witnessing to his peaceful reign in the midst of the idolatrous and death-bound kingdoms of the world; they do not fear because he has won the victory.

* John of Damascus, Troparia, Canon for the Assumption.

† Missale Romanum, Preface of the Ascension I.