My beloved spiritual children in Our Risen Lord and Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS RISEN! TRULY HE IS RISEN!
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ON MAY 28th OUR HOLY ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHURCH CELEBRATES THE DIVINE ASCENSION OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST INTO HEAVEN
By Metropolitan of Nafpaktos HIEROTHEOS
Forty days after His Resurrection Christ ascended into heaven, where He had been previously, according to His own words to the Disciples before His Passion: "Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? (St. John 6:61-62). Of course, this does not mean that Christ, as God, was not in heaven during the time of His incarnation, but that He would go up even with his human flesh. Moreover, His coming down from heaven is meant as Divine condescension and not as a change of place.
In the time between His Resurrection and Ascension, He appeared many times to His Disciples, to whom He revealed the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, according to the words of Saint Luke: "to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3).
The feast of the Lord's Ascension has great meaning and importance for the Christian and spiritual life because it is connected with the theosis (deification) of every person. In what follows, presenting the central Christological points of this great feast of the Lord, we shall also establish its great value.
First, we must exactly what Holy Scripture says about this Divine Ascension. The Old Testament makes prophecies about this great event, and the New Testament presents it.
Just as we have prophecies about all the happening of the Lord in the Old Testament, this is true for the Divine Ascension as well. The Prophet Ezekiel saw a vision, which certainly refers to Christ's Ascension: "Then the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the temple and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted wings and mounted up from the earth in my sight" (Ezekiel 10:18-19).
In the teaching of Christ Himself and in His speech to the Disciples before His Passion He said the following: "I came forth from the Father and have come into the world, Again, I leave the world and go to the Father" (St. John 16:28). And in another situation Christ gave assurance: "No one has ascended to heaven but the one who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven" (St. John 3:13).
We see the Ascension in the stories of the Evangelists, who refer to this event. Concretely, it is told by the Evangelist Mark (St. Mark 16:19) and by Saint Luke, both in his Gospel (St. Luke 24:50-53) and in the Acts of the Apostles, which he himself wrote: (Acts 1:3 and 9-11). The details of the event of the Ascension and of the way in which it happened are described in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles...
"...The Apostle Paul, referring to the central points in Christ's work of absolution, the work of the Divine Economy, also includes the Ascension: "God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by the Angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory" (I Timothy 3:16). Referring to the power of the Father, he says that it "worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 1:20). Elsewhere we have said that the power of the Father is also the Son's power. After Christ cleansed us from sins "He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3), and indeed Christ gave the promise to all who united with Him that they too would sit on the throne of His Father: "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His Throne" (Revelation 3:21).
From these passages which have been cited it is very clear that the Church attaches great meaning to the event of the Divine Ascension, because Christ's Ascension expresses the deepest meaning of the spiritual life.
The icon of Christ's Ascension is splendid. The Disciples were astonished and watched with joy and wonder as He ascended into heaven. Saint Luke reports: "Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up... and while they looked steadfastly towards heaven as He went up..." (Acts 1:9-10).
According to Saint Athanasios the Great, the Holy Disciples did not see Him when He ascended to Heaven but were gazing steadfastly, which means that "the intent eye was fixed in the direction of the All-Seeing eye". It is essentially a matter of a continuous gaze. Their gaze was riveted, we would say, on Christ, Who had been received into heaven.
This posture, apart from the sense of the grandeur of the image of the ascended Christ also has the meaning that the Christians have the eye of the soul, the nous, fixed on heaven. It is in this light that we should view the liturgical exhortation of the priest "let us lift up our hearts" or in the Divine Liturgy of the brother of God James, "let us lift up our nous and hearts". And this is important because our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ" (Philippians 3:20). And in another place the Apostle Paul sends word: "Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth" (Col. 3:2). This fixed attention on Christ and lifting up of the nous to Christ is not unrelated to noetic hesychia, the hesychastic life, when the nous detaches itself from every earthly desire and is lifted up only to Christ..."
"...Since we are members of the Church in which the whole work of the Divine Dispensation is experienced, we have obligations. As citizens of the incorporeal we must be far removed from desires of the flesh. As members of holy humanity and temples of God we must live in holiness. Since God has granted us the royal house, the Church, instead of hell, we must make our peace with God (Proklos, Archbishop of Constantinople).
It is necessary to practice purity of the body and soul. A person must keep the eye of his soul as a watchful guard so that when the robber devil comes to pollute him with bodily sins, he will be ready to say: "I am not going to turn traitor to the Lord's possession" (Saint Epiphanios). That is to say, I will not betray the property which belongs to the Lord Christ.
After Christ's Disciples had passed through all the trials, the purification, the experience of the Cross, then they remained in the upper room and in this way received the Holy Spirit. And we, when we worship Christ, must return to Jerusalem, which means peace. We must make peace with ourselves and others. And not only should we return to Jerusalem, but we should wait in the Upper Room, which is our nous, where we should be in constant prayer and take care to purify ourselves from passions and base thoughts. In this way, we shall attain the visitation of the Comforter (Parakletos) and worship in truth the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Saint Gregory Palamas)..."
Christ's Ascension is the jewel of all the feasts of the Lord, the completion of all that Christ did for us, through the work of the Divine Dispensation. This consummate feast invites us to spiritual perfection and fullness, to participate in Christ's Ascension and the experience our own ascension. (Source: The Feasts of the Lord. An Introduction to the Twelve Feasts and Orthodox Christology)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"-- Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Divine Resurrection,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George