Recovering a Full Theological Vision of the Ascension
Hieromonk Herman (Majkrzak)
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.
—John 12:32
Ascension Day is possibly the most forgotten of the great feasts of the Lord. Why? In part because, unlike all the other feasts of the same rank, it can never fall on a Saturday or Sunday. Forty days after Pascha is always a Thursday, and midweek services during the Paschal season are not very popular.
Not only is this feast neglected, though, it is often mischaracterized as one of emptiness, a feast of absence and waiting. It is sometimes described, even in sermons and articles, as an “in-between” feast, an awkward nine days in which, while we must sadly give up the triumphant hymns of Pascha, still we are not yet granted the verdant warmth of the Holy Spirit. It’s seen as a corridor joining two spacious and beautiful halls, but itself containing little that is noteworthy, aside from the virtues of patience and hope.
To be sure, this is a feast of patience and hope. The hymns in the Pentecostarion bear witness to this, as do the parting words of the Lord to his disciples: “Stay in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high” (Lk. 24:49). Yet according to the Scriptures, they returned to Jerusalem “with great joy” (ibid., v. 52). Theirs was not the sorrow of abandoned children but the joy of those who knew their master to be exalted and glorified, who saw the resurrection take on a greater fullness than it had had during the forty days since Christ’s arising.
Enlightened by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Apostles came to see the Ascension as the key that opens up the mystery of our salvation. They preached and wrote about it constantly. But in the Church today it is referred to rarely if ever throughout the year. We will take the Apostles as our guides as we endeavor to enrich our somewhat meager conception of this great act of redemption.
I
“…He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father.” The Ascension is not only a feast commemorating a past event, it is also a dogma which all the baptized are duty-bound to profess. This is made explicit in the Creed, and in that text it is coupled with an earlier phrase: “He came down from heaven … and became man.” As God, he descended from heaven and took on human nature, and as Man, he ascended to his Father and sat down next to him. The Psalmist sings of this in prophecy: “Coming forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, he rejoiceth as a giant to run his course. His going forth is from the uttermost part of heaven, and his circuit even unto the end of it again” (Ps. 18:6–7). St. Paul speaks of the same “circuit”: “In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the same who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things” (Eph. 4:9–10).
It is no exaggeration to say that the feasts of Annunciation and Christmas have their exact counterpart and, indeed, their fulfillment in the Ascension. Christ united himself to our nature in order to raise us up to God. The Word became flesh and made his home among men, but through the Ascension, “the head of our human race is at home, where only God is at home.”1 And he ascended, not to abandon the earth—much less his flesh—but to fill all things with himself.
The eternal Word of God took on our human substance in order to become the “firstborn of many brethren,” in whom we are all adopted as children of God (cf. Rom. 8:16, 8:29). As the first-born, in obedience to the Law, forty days after his birth from the Holy Virgin the infant Jesus was presented at the earthly Temple of his Father, where two turtledoves were sacrificed in his stead (Lk. 2:24). Likewise, forty days after his Resurrection, having given himself over to death, Christ, the “firstborn from the dead,” offered himself and all his sufferings before the throne of his Father in heaven, so that, “as the head of the body, he might in all things have the preeminence” (cf. Col. 1:18).
II
We thus see in the Ascension the ultimate goal of the Incarnation, the completion of the work begun at Christmas. But we can say more: it is the fulfillment of Holy Friday as well. The Ascension to heaven is the final priestly act of the sacrifice made upon the Cross.
But is not the Resurrection the perfect fulfillment of the Cross? Yes, in at least one sense: the Resurrection shows that by submitting to humiliation, Christ was raised to incorruptible glory; that by submitting to the judgment of sinful men, Christ was vindicated as “the only Sinless One;” that by submitting to death, Christ won the victory over death. This description of the Cross as kenosis—the divine self-emptying that paradoxically results in exaltation—is a central motif in the Orthodox approach to the Cross and the Resurrection. However, the theological vision of the Apostles and Fathers is not exhausted by this theme alone.2 The Cross is first of all the perfect sacrifice made on our behalf to God the Father: the Guiltless One suffering for the guilty, and so reconciling them to God. In the words of St. Gregory Palamas:
Christ overturned the devil through suffering and his flesh which he offered as a sacrifice to the Father, as a pure and altogether holy victim—how great is his gift!—and reconciled God to our human race … Since he gave his blood, which was sinless and therefore guiltless, as a ransom for us who were liable to punishment because of our sins, he redeemed us from our guilt.3
The late Fr. Matthew Baker notes that in much Orthodox theology of the twentieth century, “understanding of traditional atonement language has been obscured by confessional polemics and by the influence of modern existentialism, with its antinomian tendencies.”4 Recovering a full theology of the Ascension requires a corrective, because so much depends on Christ’s fulfillment of the Old Testament priesthood and sacrifices.
In the Old Covenant, the high priest entered once a year into the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle (later, the Temple), to offer the blood of a bullock and a goat (cf. Leviticus 16). He offered only the blood: the rest of the sacrifice was burnt outside the camp (Lev. 16:27; cf. Heb. 13:13). These actions prefigured and prepared for the perfect High Priesthood of Christ. Sacrificed outside the city walls of Jerusalem, his priestly work was not completed until he entered “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Heb. 9:24), “taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (ibid., v. 12). Christ’s Ascension to heaven is thus the completion of his priestly office begun on the Cross. Bringing his own lifeblood—the human blood he took from his Mother, the daughter of Adam and Eve—he made the offering of human life which Adam failed to make in Eden. Mankind is saved not simply by the shedding of Christ’s Blood on Calvary, but by the presentation of that Blood in intercession for us before the Throne of God. “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5–6).
The Apostle’s emphasis here on Christ’s Manhood and on his priestly mediation on behalf of men before the Father are accents not stressed in much Eastern theology and hymnography in the aftermath of the Arian heresy, given the pressing need to safeguard the Orthodox teaching of Christ’s perfect Divinity and consubstantiality with the Father. But these themes were never entirely lost, since they are eminently Scriptural and Patristic, and rediscovering them is key to our full understanding of the Ascension.
