Last Part of my Ascension Chapter | Mark Shea – Patheos

from my Creed book.As I have been reminding you, this is my last week writing at Patheos. As of Monday, June 1, I will be firing up my new blog full time over at Stumbling Toward Heaven. Be sure to click the link and bookmark it because thats where youll find me after this week! This week, I am finishing my tenure here at Catholic and Enjoying It with a three part series that comes from my book-in-progress on the Creed. This the last part of that series, wherein we are discussing the Ascension (since the Church is celebrating that this week in preparation for Pentecost).

Seated at the Right Hand of the Father

Two thousand years of Christian culture has kneaded into the western mind the idea that Heaven is something like a civil right. Dying and going to Heaven is a phrase taken most especially for granted by almost everybody who shares some connection to American religious tradition. But the New Testament has something startling to say to us on this point: namely, that we have no natural right to Heaven. To be sure, God desires us to be with him for eternity (which is what Heaven means, not a place with pearly gates and streets of gold as in popular imagination). As Paul puts it, God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). But, of course, mere creatures, much less fallen ones like us, can no more bridge the gap between themselves and their Creator than Hamlet can suddenly show up at Shakespeares front door demanding tea and cakes. That is why Jesus says, No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man (John 3:13). His point is that only in joining human nature to his divine nature can human nature hope to participate in the life of the Blessed Trinity. His point is not that he offers some technique or theory or school of mystic philosophy to make us able to pull ourselves up to Heaven by our bootstraps. It is that he himself is the way to Heaven:

[Y]ou know the way where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. (John 14:4-6)

So in the Ascension, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9-11). But this too is done for our sake because Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, not to revel in narcissistic egoism, but as our pioneer. The Ascension is a divine act of trail-blazing so that this prayer may one day be fulfilled:

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which you have given me in your love for me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you; and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:24-26)

Jesus: Hidden King and Great High Priest

The pattern of weaning from earthly expectation of kingship culminates in Jesus inaugurating his kingdom, not in Jerusalem as David didwhere moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal (Matthew 6:19)but in Heaven. This too fulfils the Scripture and the great vision vouchsafed to Daniel, centuries before, of the kingdom given to the coming Son of man:[A]nd behold, with the clouds of heaventhere came one like a son of man,and he came to the Ancient of Daysand was presented before him.And to him was given dominionand glory and kingdom,that all peoples, nations, and languagesshould serve him;his dominion is an everlasting dominion,which shall not pass away,and his kingdom onethat shall not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14)

And so, on several occasions, the New Testament speaks of Jesus Ascension using the peculiar image of a king who goes away and stays away while his kingdom is put in order for him by his servants acting in his name and with his authority. Most famously, Jesus does this in the Parable of the Pounds:

As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. He said therefore, A nobleman went into a far country to receive kingly power and then return. Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten pounds, and said to them, Trade with these till I come. (Luke 19:11-13)

We will discuss this and similar parables of judgment more later, but suffice it to say here that the picture we are given is of Jesus going to a far country and entrusting to his servants gifts with which they are to increase and spread his holdings in the world.

Relatedly, Paul tells the Corinthians that Jesus must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25), again suggesting that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father as king while we, his servants, are advancing his kingdom with the gifts he gives us.

And Peter will likewise describe Jesus as the one, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old (Acts 3:21), with the curious qualifier that we must repent and turn to him that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19).

The answer, of course, is found in the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church so that Christ remains present with us here on earth in the Church and through the sacramentssupremely the Eucharist in which he is really and truly present body, blood, soul, and divinitywhile still fully present in Heaven. By his power, manifested in our mysterious union with him despite our sins and failings, we are joined with him. As he himself says, The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, Behold, here it is! or There! for behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst. (Luke 17:20-21).

In the Ascension, the day has dawned when man is now present in Heavenbody, soul, and spiritin the person of the Son of man, Christ Jesus. Because he is already there, we who are in him are there as well, because God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:4-6).

This does not, of course, mean that Christians share in his sinlessness, perfection, or glorificationyet. A quick look at the news makes that clear. Rather, it means that humanity already has a toehold in Heaven and an advocate who labors tirelessly for our redemption when we fail and fall, as we so often do.

So the other image the New Testament holds before our eyes concerning the Ascended Christ is of Jesus standing before the Father as an eternal High Priest, perpetually making intercession for us. As the Catechism (662) says:

There Christ permanently exercises his priesthood, for he always lives to make intercession for those who draw near to God through him (Hebrews 7:25).As high priest of the good things to come he is the center and the principal actor of the liturgy that honors the Father in heaven (Hebrews 9:11; cf. Revelation 4:6-11).

This is why the Mass is so vital, because it is our greatest encounter with the Ascended Christ, fully present in the Eucharist and eternally worshipping his Father. In that liturgy, he not only acts as our High Priest, he brings us into his work through our baptism and confirmation to participate in his work as kings, priests, and prophets as well. We become fellow workers with Christ, building up the kingdom of Heaven here on earth with the gifts of the Spirit poured out as the fruits of his Ascension and Pentecost (1 Corinthians 3:9).

Acting by the Power of the Spirit

This reveals the paradox of Jesus going away to be seated on the Heavenly Throne in Acts, the companion volume to Luke. For the gospel Luke has just written only tells us of what Jesus began to do and teach (Acts 1:1). His entire earthly ministry is only the spark. The Church, filled with his Spirit, is the fire and hehe himselfis now to continue his work in a way more intimate with us than it was during his earthly ministry. Biblically, to be seated is to be in repose. Not asleep. Not watching TV. Not doing nothing. But secure in ones dominion. In antiquity, judges were seated. So were monarchs when they were enthroned. To say that Jesus is seated is to say he now reigns. To be sure, there is still work to be done. But it is in the nature of mop up, not in the nature of deciding the battle. The worst thing that could ever have happened in the universe has already happenedand God has turned it into the best thing. God has already been killed. Compared with that, everything is pretty small beer. But the death of God on the Cross has led to the life of the world. Jesus has entered on his reign. He is enthroned as King at the Fathers right handnow.

The right hand was the good hand in antiquity. The hand that pours out blessing, the hand that holds the sceptre, the hand that works, acts, fights. The hand is the locus of action. We do not theorize with our hands, we do things. Jesus, seated at the right hand of the Father, does things. And he empowers us to do things tooby his Spirit. Thus, when Peter appeals to the crowd at Pentecost he doesnt tell them God has poured out a concept or an idea. He has poured out this which you see and hear (Acts 2:33). Catholic Faith is still the same today. To be sure, we walk by faith and not by sight. But the fruit of our faith is still visible in the incarnate signs and acts of love we bear to the world. All these are poured out on us from Jesus, seated at the right hand of God the Father in a hope oriented not so much toward the future as toward eternity. For the same God we have known and know now is not going to abandon us. Rather, Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, precedes us into the Fathers glorious kingdom so that we, the members of his Body, may live in the hope of one day being with him for ever (CCC 666).

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Last Part of my Ascension Chapter | Mark Shea - Patheos