May 22 Mon
The New Form of His Presence. Excerpts from Pope Benedict XVI
What do the Bible and the Liturgy tell us by saying that Jesus “was lifted up”? The verb “to lift up” was originally used in the Old Testament and refers to a royal enthronement. Thus, Christ’s Ascension means the enthronement of the Crucified and Risen Son of Man, the manifestation of God’s kingship over the world.

Also, it is said that Jesus was “lifted up” (v. 9) and then, “taken up” (v. 11). The event is not described as a journey to on high but rather as an action of the power of God who introduces Jesus into the space of closeness to the Divine. The presence of the cloud that “took him out of their sight” (v. 9), recalls a very ancient image of Old Testament, the cloud of Sinai and above the tent of the Covenant in the desert, and the luminous cloud on the mountain of the Transfiguration.

As Christ ascended into Heaven, the human being has entered into intimacy with God in a new and unheard-of way. “Heaven does not indicate a place above the stars but something far more daring and sublime: it indicates Christ himself, the divine Person who welcomes humanity fully and forever, the One in whom God and man are inseparably united forever. Man’s being in God: this is Heaven.

And we draw close to Heaven, indeed, we enter Heaven to the extent that we draw close to Jesus and enter into communion with him. The Solemnity of the Ascension invites us to be in profound communion with the dead and Risen Jesus, invisibly present in the life of each one of us.

The historical character of the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension helps us to recognize and understand the transcendent condition of the Church; she was not born and does not live to compensate for the absence of her Lord who has “disappeared.” On the contrary, the Church finds the reason for her existence and mission in the invisible presence of Jesus, a presence working through the power of his Spirit.

In other words, the Church does not merely prepare for the return of an “absent” Jesus, but, on the contrary, lives and works to proclaim his “glorious presence,” that he was historically real, and living.
Madonna of Michelangelo