What the Ascension teaches about prophecy and false religious expectations
Christ did not restore Israel’s kingdom—he founded the Church and sent the Apostles to suffer. He turned their hopes from political triumph to the conquest of souls.
Christ did not restore Israel’s kingdom—he founded the Church and sent the Apostles to suffer. He turned their hopes from political triumph to the conquest of souls.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the disciples' transformation after the Resurrection prepared them for Christ's visible departure.
That Christ discouraged nationalistic and speculative hopes, urging instead the mission to convert the world.
Why the Ascension was marked by solemn joy: it sealed their spiritual maturity and inaugurated their apostolic calling.
He shows us that God draws souls away from worldly ambitions by filling them with the labour and reward of divine charity.
The Ascension
The Passage of Our Lord to the Father
Chapter XVII
St. Luke xxiv. 50-53; St. Mark xvi. 19, 20; St. John xx. 30, 31; xxi. 25.
Story of the Gospels, § 181
Burns and Oates, London, 1892
At noon or soon after
If the Ascension took place at the time which is commonly supposed, the various companies of the faithful would have abundant time to assemble from the city and the adjacent parts to meet in the neighbourhood of Bethany.
We have then to contemplate this last gathering of His little flock around Him by the Good Shepherd, before His departure to another world, and we are struck at once with the great change which His presence with them during the forty days which had now passed since His Resurrection, had produced. Their love and devotion to Him had been deepened wonderfully, but they now found themselves able to bear the idea of parting from Him for the rest of their mortal existence without any pang of repining.
We have dwelt on this change in their spiritual condition in a few words already, and need not now enter on it further. It must have been a singular joy to the Sacred Heart of our Lord to find Himself for the first time surrounded by the holiest of His Saints—for such must undoubtedly have been so many of that blessed company, which was after a short time to be dispersed by various causes, and scattered over the face of the earth, but which was to be in the main kept together in the closest spiritual unity and perfect mutual charity.
The greater number of those who were now collected around our Lord, had no forethought of the storms of persecution which were erelong to drive them away from Jerusalem, though our Lord had already told them that they were to be witnesses to Him in all parts of the world.
Statement of St Luke
But it is not here our business to dwell upon the joy which the assemblage of that blessed company may have occasioned to the Sacred Heart of our Lord, nor, on the other hand, the extent to which that joy of His in them shed itself in turn upon their hearts, now that they were collected to receive from Him His last parting blessing.
St. Luke, in his account of this last interview, uses a word which is enough to attract our attention, because it is an unusual expression in the Greek of the New Testament, and which is rendered in the Vulgate by the Latin word convescens, which our translators represent by the ordinary term ‘eating together,’ but it is uncertain whether the translation is accurate.
It is not impossible that it may mean here, that the whole company shared a solemn meal with our Lord, and that the ambiguity which characterizes the language of the Evangelist here and on several other similar occasions, is meant by him to be understood, by his brethren in the faith, of the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.
The date of the Ascension seems to be commonly thought in the Church to have been about noon, or soon after, which would allow abundantly for the faithful to assemble either in the Cenacle, which was at no great distance from the spot, and where our Lord may have met them before He led them out as far as Bethania, as St. Luke tells us in his Gospel, to the spot from which He ultimately ascended into Heaven.
At all events, it may be well to suppose that a good part of the morning was occupied in holy and devout conversation, by which the assembled faithful may have been prepared more immediately for the mystery of which they were to be the eyewitnesses.
The question put to our Lord
Some of the company took the occasion to put to our Lord a question concerning the future, or perhaps the immediate present, which must at that time have been continually present to many minds among the faithful.
We may remember how Cleophas and his companion in the walk to Emmaus on Easter Day, had mentioned to our Lord, before His discovery of Himself to them, that it had been their hope and expectation that it was a part of His mission in the world to redeem Israel—by which we suppose the speaker to have meant that He was to bring about the promised restoration of the Jewish polity and the independence of the kingdom.
This event was probably cherished in imagination in the hearts of all the nation, and from this few indeed may have been free as a cherished day-dream. We seem to see the spiritualization of this anticipation in the prophets, though it would require much length of comment if it were to be drawn out in any fulness of detail.
How did Our Lord handle this question and these hopes for a worldly kingdom?
And what does his response teach us about the various hopes cherished by Catholics today?
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