Scripture Reflections for the Ascension of the Lord

“Through our everyday lives, we can choose small things, small witnesses, to prove in many ways that God is truly alive and that we are witnesses to that life”

“Resurrection is not just a return to the kind of life we have now, life in this world. It is the beginning of a new world, a human bodily life in the Kingdom of God.”

“The promise of the Ascension is that since Christ has been exalted to the heights of heaven, we too can share in this exaltation”

“The message of the Apocalypse, like the message of the Ascension, is the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of God in Jesus Christ, such that every power that is not yet in thrall to the Lord of love must in the end disintegrate and pass away”

“since we are incorporated into him by faith and baptism we are members of his Body, which means that where he has gone we shall also follow. That is a promise.”

“Where Christ has gone, we hope to follow. Our newly found humanity is properly lived in the intimate presence of God. Christ’s invisibility to our eyes is a measure of the bliss we cannot comprehend.”

“There is no one present who is another me or another you and yet here we all are, perfectly diverse and deeply loved as God's own”

“With the spirit of Jesus in them, they will start to bring Heaven to Earth and Earth to Heaven. They will become agents of this reconciliation.”

“I think that the apostles had not understood very well Jesus’ message of the Reign of God, which is a call to service, forgiveness, compassion, and giving totally of oneself for the common good. The Reign of God is not establishing a kingdom nor anything else. It is changing our way of living.”

"The Ascension is one of the most ancient feasts in the Church, and yet probably is not one that many have any attachment or devotion to. Sandwiched between the Resurrection..."

"This is an unusual Lord’s Day, in which the “action” of the Feast Day actually takes place in the First Reading. We typically think of all the narratives of Jesus’..."

“The two white-robed persons ask Jesus’ friends, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Are they saying don’t look up, look towards each other?”

"The Feast of the Ascension obviously falls between the beginning of Easter season with Easter Sunday itself and the conclusion of Eastertide on Pentecost Sunday. Perhaps it can seem to..."

"A man in white, the astronaut Yuri Gagarin, reportedly said: “I went up to space, but I didn't encounter God”. But had he listened to the two men in white..."

"We tend to think along a sequence, especially when it come to the passing of time. One hour follows another, one year follows another and so on and so on...."

"The 'Longer Ending' of St Mark's Gospel records three encounters with the Risen Christ. Firstly there is an encounter with Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons...."

“Jesus has entered God’s space, a different kind of space, with a different kind of time. God’s space and ours, what we call heaven and earth, are different but not far from each other, different but not distant.”

“The mystery of love and intimacy contains that paradox: To remain present to someone we love we have to sometimes be absent, in ways big and small. In the paradox of love, we can only fully bless each other when we go away.”

"Today we celebrate what appears to be a leave taking for Jesus has passed beyond our sight. Yet we remember that he has said: “Behold I am with you always..."

"The solemn feast of the Ascension of the Lord is one of those feasts that can bring fear into the life of the preacher. How does one speak or write..."

“what we mean is, no, he's gone into this higher realm, he's actually closer to us, more available to us than he was before”

“Liturgically, he presents eternally to the Father the great sacrifice of the cross and we join ourselves to that sacrifice. Do you see now why the Ascension matters so much for the life of the Church?”

“think of the ascension of Jesus not as his going away but his going to a place of command. Where he is now going to direct the great work of his church.”

"We tend to read the Ascension along enlightenment lines, as if Christ has gone to a distant, irrelevant place. The reality point is this: Jesus, in ascending into heaven, has..."

"Jesus was the meeting of heaven and earth. His Ascension returned him to God in order to reign as the world’s new king, and his orders to the disciples to..."

"The Ascension of the Lord empowers the Church to fulfill its messianic mission: to gather the nations of the world into a relationship with the God of Israel."