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From The Associate...
HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN…"
These words make part of the ancient baptismal creed of the Romans that we call the Apostles' Creed. They refer, of course, to the event spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles, when Jesus was taken from this world in bodily form and re-entered heaven, an event that the Church calls the Ascension and celebrates as an important feast. Two questions immediately arise here: (1) Does this mean that Jesus floated up to a place on the other side of the clouds, that heaven is a place somewhere above our heads? (2) Given that this event took place, why is it important? Why would it be included in a statement of crucial dogmas necessary for the believer from the very beginning of the Church's history?
In answer to the first question: There was a famous incident many years ago when a Soviet cosmonaut first went up into space and solemnly declared that "God was not there." He thought this to be a decisive refutation of the Christian faith. Christians obviously believe that heaven is a place located above us somewhere, and that if we just went far enough, we would get there. This atheistic fellow went very far above us, and found nothing but empty space. Conclusion: there is obviously no heaven, and therefore no God. The problem with this eminent logic comes at the beginning. Christians do not now, and have never taught or believed that heaven was above us spatially, that it was a part of this universe that one might reach if one could only go high enough. This idea of the "heavens above" is, rather, a scriptural image, meaning to say that heavenly life is on a higher plane than earthly life: more lovely, more lasting, more colorful, more real in every way.
The second question is more important. So Christ ascended into heaven. So what? What truth does this communicate that I as a Christian need to get hold of? That crucial truth is this: that the ruler of the universe, the second person of the Trinity, is a human, made up of body and soul. The Ascension is the act by which the God-Man, the eternal Word wrapped in human flesh, takes that humanity, now purified and glorified, with him into the Eternal Realm where it becomes part of God himself forever. The Ascension completes the work of Christ in saving and transforming the human race. It is our first promise that we ourselves will be taken up the same way into the very being of God. (The Assumption of Mary is our second promise.) St. Athanasius, the great Doctor of the Church, was fond of saying, "God became man that man might become God." The Incarnation was the accomplishment of the first half of that statement; the Ascension fulfills the second half. Man has now become God, become partaker of the Divine nature.
If this idea seems mind-boggling and difficult to get hold of, it should be. It is the most remarkable news by a long shot that ever hit the human race: that God intends us not only to live forever, but to share his very nature.
To attain to that Divine life is the only point of our existence; it is the only reason we are here on earth; it is worth anything and everything we have or can do to gain it. This is what we remember when we joyfully celebrate the Ascension.
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