Ascension

In Oxford, there’s a custom on Ascension Thursday for all of the choirs of the various colleges to climb to the tops of their gothic spires early in the morning to sing to the Lord as the sun rises over the Cotswolds countryscape.

It may seem a bit silly, a bit literalist for our age, but there’s something very dear and true at the core, I think.  We climb a tower on the day we remember Jesus ascending into the sky and disappearing from sight by a cloud because we want to be near him.  We don’t have the language to say the kind of prayer of longing properly, so we do what dumb animals or children would do—try to act out what we want as best we can, however crudely.

The prayers of the Church for the Feast of the Ascension speak about how in ascending to heaven forty days after his resurrection, Jesus Christ drew nearer to us.  Nearer, not further.  It’s one of the aching paradoxes of the pilgrimage of faith to try and untangle what this could mean.  Before his death, he talked at length with the twelve apostles about how they would mourn and long for him, but how it was actually better that he was leaving them.  How can we understand this?

There are two images that come to mind.  Imagine a couple out on a long hike, say a many-staged camping journey, like you might take in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota or another similarly wild and remote place.  At one point, the two decide that one of them needs to leave and push on ahead at a faster pace.  A few days’ journey from where they are is a cabin with beautiful furnishings, a pristine spot by a lake full of fish, a well-stocked pantry and cellar and enough kerosene and fuel to last all through the coming winter.  But the house needs to be opened up and made ready.  One of them needs to go ahead and make preparations.

As the man and woman part, they grow farther apart by one measurement, the measurement of physical space, of sight.  But what about the invisible part of them?  Aren’t their hearts drawn all the closer together?  They’ve been camping and fending together all along the way, but now, with the promise of these preparations, they have a new dynamic in their hearts, the energy of hope for a settled life together, a stable resting place where they will be able to simply be with one another in peace.  In this sense, they are far, far closer than they ever have been before.  The promise of a deeper union after the separation even now binds them more closely together within their hearts.

Jesus promised us something like this, only much greater.  In my Father’s house there are many rooms, he told us; I go there to prepare a place for you.  This is the final Sabbath rest, the settled place that we long for more than anything else.  This is the settled Sabbath rest with the great love of our hearts, the God who is the communion of love, who made us and then re-made us in baptism to enter into that communion.

A second image also comes to mind.  When a town has a good mayor, or a parish has a good pastor, it sometimes happens that he is called to a higher place.  “Higher” means being responsible for and with power over a greater scope of terrain.  We frequently express this with physical space—the CEO is usually on the upper floors of the skyscraper—and for good reason.  Often physical height does make a person more present to a large area, as when an army can take a mountaintop and see everything else below.  But the deeper meaning of “height” is really about the range and depth of influence, presence by power.

But back to our promoted man.  We’re sad to see him go.  We’ll miss his daily presence among us, the way he brought life to the community through his leadership.  But in another way we’re happy, not just for him and they joy he’ll receive from his promotion, but we’re also happy for the world because of the good that will come about.  Soon after the promotion, we start to see traces of it.  The mayor becomes governor, and a few months later on a visit to a neighboring city we notice how here, too, now the bus stations are cleaner and more efficient.  Or our pastor becomes bishop, and we notice a fresh spirit of prayer and joy now spreading among the leadership of the entire diocese.  It’s almost as though the traces of this man are now waiting for us in new places by reason of his influence, long before we even arrive.

The Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world now.  Christ has taken up his throne and he is the Lord.  Not just lord of this, or the lord of that—he is the only true Lord, to whom is entrusted everything that is.  Any other meaning of “Lord” or “king” or “CEO” is only a puny analogy to what Lord truly means, and that is Jesus Christ.  We can see his traces waiting for us now all over the world.  Sometimes obviously, like when we go to places where the Gospel has been preached and the Mass is celebrated, and people live in hope of the resurrection, or when we meet people who are not Catholic or even Christian, yet nevertheless sense the importance of the Pope for all humankind.  But also in more mysterious ways.  A friend once recounted to me how she traveled to a largely unevangelized part of the world, expecting to bring Christ there with her; instead she found that he was somehow already there among the people, secretly unknown to them, but still there for someone who already knew him.

At my seminary, we have a large tower that rises above most of the buildings in the surrounding city.  All day long last Thursday, I’d been remembering a year, more than a decade ago, when I’d climbed the bell tower of an Anglican chapel and listened for the English psalmody as a grey dawn unfurled.  But the days are busy, and it is easy to lose track of little inspirations.

At the end of the day, though, after night had fallen and I was brushing my teeth, I remembered again.  In my slippers, I made for the elevator and then climbed two more flights of stairs to the uppermost observation deck.  I was, in one sense, alone, as I had hoped.  It was all that a simple, dumb creature like me could ask for, trying to express something of longing that words could not capture.