The Ascension

On the fortieth day after Pascha — always a Thursday — the Church keeps the Ascension of the Lord, when the risen Christ was taken up into heaven from the Mount of Olives in the sight of his disciples and “sat down at the right hand of the Father.” A movable Great Feast, it is not a departure but a glorification: in Christ, human nature is enthroned within the life of the Holy Trinity, and the disciples are sent back to await the Spirit.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Gospel event

The Ascension (Greek Analēpsis, “the taking up”; Slavonic Voznesenie) is recorded by St Luke in both his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles (Luke 24:50–53; Acts 1:1–12; cf. Mark 16:19). After forty days of resurrection appearances during which he spoke to the disciples of the Kingdom of God, Christ leads them out to the Mount of Olives near Bethany, blesses them, and is taken up; “a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). As they gaze upward, two men in white apparel — angels — stand by and ask, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The forty-day interval is Luke’s own (Acts 1:3), and it fixes the feast on the fortieth day of the Paschal season, always a Thursday, ten days before Pentecost (Ware, in the Introduction to The Festal Menaion and in the propers of the Pentecostarion, trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, 1990).

Not a departure but a glorification

The temptation is to read the Ascension as a leave-taking, a subtraction — Christ withdrawn from the world, absence where there was presence. Orthodox theology reads it as the opposite: an exaltation and a fulfillment. The Ascension is the enthronement of the incarnate Word, the completion of the movement begun at the Nativity. Having taken human nature at the Incarnation, and having redeemed it through death and resurrection, Christ now bears that same human nature — the flesh he assumed from the Virgin, now risen and glorified — into the very life of God, so that manhood is seated “at the right hand of the Father” (the Creed; Mark 16:19). It is human nature itself that is glorified and enthroned; the Ascension is the guarantee and firstfruits of humanity’s own destiny in the Kingdom (Ware, The Orthodox Way, SVS Press, 1979/1995, ch. on the risen and ascended Lord; the feast’s propers, Pentecostarion). The troparion catches the paradox of a departure that is a gift: “Thou hast ascended in glory, O Christ our God, granting joy to Thy disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit” (troparion, Tone 4; Pentecostarion). The ascending Christ does not abandon his own — “lo, I am with you alway” (Matthew 28:20) — but changes the mode of his presence, so that his going is the condition of the Spirit’s coming (John 16:7).

Two further theological notes belong to the feast. First, the Ascension is inseparable from Pentecost, ten days later: Christ ascends precisely in order to send the Comforter, so that the two feasts are one movement — the Son returns to the Father that the Spirit may be poured out on the Church (John 16:7; and see Pentecost). Second, the feast is directed toward the Second Coming: the angels’ words — “shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go” — make the Ascension the pledge of the Return, so that the Church, gazing after the ascended Lord, is turned around to await both the Spirit and the End (Acts 1:11; the feast’s stichera, Pentecostarion).

History of the feast

In the earliest period the ascension and the outpouring of the Spirit seem to have been celebrated together within the single fifty-day “Pentecost” — the whole span from Pascha treated as one continuous feast, without the ascension marked off on its own day (Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, 2nd ed., Collegeville, 1991, pp. 63–70, on the primitive undivided fifty days). The distinct feast of the Ascension on the fortieth day emerges clearly only in the later fourth century; St John Chrysostom and St Augustine both attest it by the 390s, and Egeria’s Jerusalem lectionary reflects the observance around the same period (Talley, Origins, pp. 66–70; Robert Taft, The Liturgical Year, discussion in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Kazhdan, Oxford, 1991, s.v. “Ascension”). The separating-out of the fortieth day corresponds to the maturing of the Church’s sense that the events of the Paschal cycle, though one mystery, unfold across a sequence — Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost — each worthy of its own commemoration.

The place and the icon

The icon of the Ascension has a distinctive and theologically pointed composition. At the top, Christ ascends within a mandorla of glory borne up by angels, his hand raised in blessing. But the true center of the icon is below: the Theotokos stands in the middle, erect and calm, flanked by the apostles who look up in wonder, with two white-robed angels among them pointing to heaven and repeating the angels’ words (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982, on the Ascension icon; and see The Icon of the Feast). The presence of the Theotokos at the center — and of St Paul, who was not yet an apostle at the historical Ascension — signals that the icon depicts not a photograph of the event but the Church: the apostolic community gathered around the Mother of God, left on earth beneath the ascended Head, awaiting the Spirit. The Theotokos, standing serene while the apostles gaze up in astonishment, is the image of the Church’s settled faith — she who bore the ascending Lord now stands as the pattern of the Church he leaves behind (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons; Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, SVS Press, 1978, on the ecclesial reading of the feast icons). The Mount of Olives, from which Christ ascended, rises beneath their feet — the same mountain from which, at Palm Sunday, he had descended to enter the city (see The Entry into Jerusalem).

See Also

References

  • The Pentecostarion. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston, 1990. (The propers of the Ascension; the troparion.)
  • The Festal Menaion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1969. (Introduction on the movable feasts.)
  • Thomas J. Talley. The Origins of the Liturgical Year. 2nd ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991. (The primitive undivided fifty days; the emergence of the fortieth-day feast.)
  • Kallistos Ware. The Orthodox Way. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1995.
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Ed. A. Kazhdan et al. Oxford, 1991 (s.v. “Ascension”).
  • Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1982.
  • Leonid Ouspensky. Theology of the Icon. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1978.
  • Scripture: Luke 24:50–53; Acts 1:1–12; Mark 16:19; John 16:7; Matthew 28:20.