Today is May 29, the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord.
The Gospel for today’s feast reads, “As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God” (Lk 24:50-53).
If you live outside the few U.S. provinces that still keep Ascension on Thursday, you might feel a twinge of liturgical whiplash. Wait — aren’t we celebrating this on Sunday?
The bishops of each ecclesiastical province decide whether to transfer the solemnity. Here in New York, it remains firmly planted forty days after Easter (exactly where Scripture locates it, I might add). Those forty days mirror the forty of Lent: preparation gives way to celebration, and celebration now yields to expectation as the Church begins the original novena, nine intense days of prayer between Ascension and Pentecost.
Why does the date matter? Because the logic of the liturgy is a logic of love. The timetable of salvation is meant to form our hearts. Today, Christ our Head rises in glory; soon the Spirit will be poured out upon the Body. Holding Ascension on Thursday allows us to feel that space, taste the anticipation and linger in the upper room with Mary and the apostles.
A trailhead of hope
Yet whatever day your parish observes the feast, its grace is the same. Pope St. Leo the Great exhorts us, “Dearly-beloved, let us rejoice with spiritual joy, and let us with gladness pay God worthy thanks and raise our hearts’ eyes unimpeded to those heights where Christ is.”
So ask: What drags my gaze back down? A nagging resentment? A scrolling habit that keeps me earthbound? An old sin I’ve made peace with?
Name it. Hand it over. The Ascension is not Christ’s farewell tour; it is the trailhead of hope. Where the Head has gone, the Body is destined to follow.
Let us pray,
Gladden us with holy joys, almighty God, and make us rejoice with devout thanksgiving, for the Ascension of Christ your Son is our exaltation, and, where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
