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Let the Scriptures Speak
Ascension / May 13, or May 16, 2021

Seventh Sunday Easter / May 16, 2021
Dennis Hamm, SJ

“Why are you standing there looking at the sky” (Acts 1:11)

Heaven's Gate Next Door

The words of the interpreting angels in Luke's account of Jesus' final departure in Acts provide an antidote to any NASA-like preoccupations regarding the physics or logistics of Jesus’ ascension. The New Testament is not interested in the mode by which the risen Jesus was transferred to the realm of glory. Luke uses assumption language from the Old Testament (Enoch and Elijah) as an image for the reality of the final withdrawal of the risen Jesus' physical presence from the assembled disciples.

Jesus’ final physical departure was a transition leading from the glory of the resurrection to the mission of the Church empowered by the Holy Spirit.

It is instructive that Luke can present the same event in two different ways. In one place (Acts 1:6), it occurs on Easter night and is described simply as being taken up into heaven; whereas in another this final withdrawal occurs forty days later, with an array of what one scholar has called “apocalyptic stage props”—movement upward into the heavens, a cloud as vehicle, and interpreting angels (Lk: 24:1).

This language recalls the transfiguration, looks forward to Pentecost, recalls Elijah, and points toward the parousia. In a third account, in the appendix to Mark at Mk 16:19, it is pictured as happening on Easter Sunday, at an indoor setting (“while they were at table”). Each account is a way of affirming that Jesus’ final physical departure was a transition leading from the glory of the resurrection to the mission of the Church empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The accounts urge us not upward but forward.


Dennis Hamm, SJ
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Fr. Hamm is emeritus professor of the New Testament at Creighton University in Omaha. He has published articles in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, The Journal Of Biblical Literature, Biblica, The Journal for the Study of the New Testament, America, Church; and a number of encyclopedia entries, as well as the book, The Beatitudes in Context (Glazier, 1989), and three other books.


Art by Martin Erspamer, OSB
from Religious Clip Art for the Liturgical Year (A, B, and C).
This art may be reproduced only by parishes who purchase the collection in book or CD-ROM form. For more information go http://www.ltp.org

 
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