The Ascension of Christ, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, c. 1760
With excerpts from the books Above the Sun and Images of the Unseen
The Ascension of Christ, His return to sit at the right hand of God the Father in heaven, signals the completion of His earthly mission. Together with the Passion and Resurrection, it forms the three-fold Paschal Mystery. According to Luke’s testimony in the Acts of the Apostles, the Ascension had as much a physical dimension to it as Christ’s death and rising. “And when he had said this, as they were looking on,” Saint Luke records, “he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (1:9).
Through His death on the Cross, Jesus bridged the unbridgeable gap between heaven and earth, indicated by the tearing of the veil in the Temple at the moment He expired on the Cross. This veil, which had concealed the Holy of Holies, God’s dwelling place in the Temple, cordoning it off from the congregation, symbolized man’s separation from God through sin (cf. Isa. 59:2). Only the high priest had been permitted to enter the Holy of Holies once a year on Yom Kippur to offer sacrifice in atonement for the people’s sins. In dying for us, rising and ascending, Jesus the true High Priest entered into the closed sanctuary of heaven to offer Himself, the final sacrifice for sin (cf. Heb. 9:24). The tearing of the veil signified the removal of the barrier between God and man, and our free access to Him henceforth through His Son. In a particular way, in His bodily Ascension, the Lord carried our human nature across the cosmic threshold into the heavenly realm: an act which profoundly demonstrates the full reconciliation of body and spirit in Him.