Ascension

iStock/sedmak

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a great push in some Catholic worshiping communities to “make the liturgy relevant.” Usually that meant the homilist was supposed to address an issue of burning concern to civic life, such as the war in Vietnam or concern for civil rights. Musicians, in turn, were asked to import into the liturgy songs from the surrounding aural culture, such as “Prepare Ye” from “Godspell” as a chant for Advent, or the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “O Happy Day” as an anthem for Easter.

It is in this context that I remember hearing both “Up, Up and Away” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane” sung during the liturgy for the Ascension of the Lord. Fortunately, neither song became permanently associated with this solemnity, since the mystery it celebrates is much more profound than levitation by balloon or aircraft.

Both the first reading from Acts and the Gospel reading from the longer ending of Mark’s Gospel vividly narrate the close of the period in which disciples experienced the risen Christ through their sensate experience, i.e., seeing him act in his transformed body and hearing him speak.

The Acts of the Apostles reading deals with two topics. Acts 1:1-4 provides a prologue to that entire book, much as Luke 1:1-4 serves as the prologue to that Gospel. Both are addressed to a certain “Theophilus,” who may have been a particular person learning about Jesus and the movement he started or (more likely, since the Greek name means “God-lover”) as a general name for all readers, especially those who have been evangelized. Acts 1:5-11 then follows, with an account of the Ascension clearly connected to a similar narrative at the end of the Gospel of Luke (24:50-52). In both accounts, Jesus promises that “what the Father has promised” / “power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” will be bestowed upon his disciples.

They are then commissioned to be his “witnesses” in Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (notice the progression which serves as a general outline for the entire book of Acts). The two narratives of the actual Ascension are slightly different: the Acts reading emphasizes Jesus’ blessing of his disciples, in the context of which he “withdraws from them” and is “carried up into heaven”; the Lucan account instead emphasizes the disciples’ activity of watching the Christ, in the context of which he “was lifted up,” and a “cloud takes him out of their sight.” Both narratives agree, however, that from this point on, encountering Jesus the Risen One will have a different quality than the sensate experience of the earliest disciples.

Mark’s account of the Ascension occurs in what scholars call the “longer ending” of the Gospel. (Without going into too much detail, some scholars presume that the original Gospel of Mark ended at 16:8, partially because some manuscript witnesses conclude the Gospel there, and partially because the style of 16:9-20 is so different from the rest of the Gospel that those verses cannot have been part of the original Gospel. Other scholars hold that the original ending of the Gospel, a continuation of 16:8, has been lost, perhaps as a leaf of the manuscript was detached from the end of the Gospel. What is clear is that various manuscripts provide text to make up for this loss, with either the “shorter ending” by itself or followed by the “longer ending” (16:9-20) from which today’s account of the Ascension is taken.) Like the accounts we have noted above, in the Markan version of this narrative, Jesus commissions “the Eleven” to “proclaim the good news to the whole creation” and he is subsequently “taken up into heaven.” Unlike those accounts, the Markan version emphasizes the signs that will accompany evangelizing believers and that Jesus ultimately “sat down at the right hand of God,” an image probably derived from Psalm 110:1 where YHWH enthrones Israel’s king. Here the focus is not so much on the end of the period of sensate experience of the risen Lord, but that the Lord continues to work with the Eleven, confirming the good news they preach with the signs that accompany that proclamation.

The Ephesians reading is taken from the beginning of the letter, where the sacred author (the apostle Paul or one of his early followers) offers the expected thanksgiving, in this case a prayer for the recipients of the letter, that they may possess the spirit of wisdom and revelation to recognize Jesus for who he truly is — the exalted Christ of God. Without narrating the Ascension, the sacred author emphasizes the results of Jesus’ exaltation “seated…at (God’s) right hand”: that he has dominion over all things (not just his “enemies” as in Psalm 110:1) and most especially over the Church, the body, of which he is the head.

The Church shows great wisdom in inviting the worshiping assembly to respond to the mystery of the exaltation of Jesus Christ, not with pop songs about flying through the air, but with cries of joy that God has manifested his power and authority over all creation in the life, deeds, death and destiny of Jesus. As the antiphon of the Responsorial Psalm articulates for us: “God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.” Alleluia!

Father Joncas, a composer, is an artist in residence at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

Sunday, May 16
Ascension of the Lord