Perhaps you’ve heard the reports that came out as the first cosmonauts went into outer space in the early 1960’s – how they had looked, but had seen no sign of God there in space. As ridiculous as this sounds, it shows the great lengths to which people are willing to go in their efforts to deny the reality of the existence of God; for, if there is no God, then who is there to tell us what we can, and cannot, do, apart from ourselves?
Although the example is a crude one, it is possible to see how the words of the scriptures can be used by those who wish to deny and deceive. In the epistle reading for today’s feast, we hear that our Lord was “taken up” from the midst of His disciples, and was received into a cloud. If we try to picture this in our minds, I suppose we would see the Lord “lifting off,” as if He was some sort of missile – and this is undoubtedly the image that the cosmonauts were invoking – as if our Lord had somehow become a satellite in orbit above the earth, or elsewhere in the cosmos.
When our Lord departed from His disciples, forty days after His resurrection from the dead, He “ascended” into heaven, to be seated at the right hand of the Father, as we affirm in the Symbol of Faith at each Divine Liturgy. We say He ascended, that is, went up, into heaven, not because “heaven” is some place over our heads in space, but because we recognize it is a higher form of existence than what we experience here and now – unless we have also made the journey, by climbing the Ladder of Divine Ascent.
This journey is not a simple one; we are not received into a cloud. We make the ascent by the way of asceticism: prayer, and fasting, giving, and self-denial; by loving God and all those made in the image of God, and not loving ourselves more than these. These ascetic labors take time, and effort – and even then, if we try to make the ascent in our own strength alone, we shall fail, ofr the task is one beyond our means, beyond our strength. But Christ, having risen from the dead, having ascended into the intimate presence of God, has done so with His human nature, which is ineffably joined to the Divine; and if we dwell in Christ, He makes possible in and through us what we cannot do ourselves.
Where, then, do we look for our Lord? We must first look within ourselves, for the kingdom of heaven, He tells us, is within us. We must journey to that place at the depth of our being, where God waits to share Himself with us in a mystic communion. Here again, we can go only by the ascetic way of life; for, otherwise, we will be distracted and diverted by the ways of this world, and the longings of our flesh. We must also look outwardly, and learn to see Christ in each person we meet. When we teach ourselves to see each other as what we are – icons of Christ, and more than icons, because we who have been baptized bear His life itself within us – we will be transformed by being vessels and servants of the love of God.
Brothers and sisters, let us celebrate this glorious feast of the Ascension of our Lord by resolving to follow where He has gone: to make our own ascent, leaving behind the life in the world, and living according to the way of heaven – loving God, and loving each other, bearing Christ and His love for all in ourselves, putting this love into practice in our lives, together with the ascetic way of life: to the glory of God, and the salvation of souls.
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