Greetings in Christ, all!
Sunday (and Saturday night), we celebrate the Ascension of Our Lord. We see the basic pattern of God’s saving work in the order of the Church calendar.
The beginning of the Church year is December, when we celebrate Jesus being born. In His Person, He combined the divine and human nature. In this, He made the human experience holy (except for sin, of course).
In Lent, we celebrate the fact that he took the divine and human nature with Him through His passion and death. A good way to think of it is this way: “He had to have a human nature to take on sin. He had to have a divine nature to conquer it.”
So, His human nature allowed Him to take on sin and die, thus killing our sin.
Then, He rose: showing He didn’t just kill our sin, His love was/is stronger than all of it.
In the Ascension, He takes that human nature with Him to Heaven, thus “throwing open the gates of Heaven” for those of us who also have a human nature.
Not only that, but because of His human nature, the risen Jesus would have been limited on earth by the ability to only be one place at a time. By ascending to Heaven, He was/is preparing to send us His Holy Spirit so that we as a family on earth are able to be Jesus everywhere we go.
This is some powerful stuff and we are so blessed to be a part of it.
Jesus’ Ascension is something He did for us and to us. Praise God.
This Tuesday I have my first meeting with the priests in my Deanery. Please pray for us. The task is daunting, but utterly necessary. I will be typing a substantial update on all of the Deanery things in the near future.
God bless you all. It would be hard for me to articulate how blessed I know I am to be your priest.
Fjk