You will return quickly,
like the light scattered above the wave
which vibrates with sudden flashes.
Donata Doni

The famous French writer Mauriac imagined a man’s life as the course of a river: clear and serene at the source, easy and tumultuous in the first stretch of descent from the mountains, tiring and tortuous in the
meanders of the plain, sudden and decisive in the estuary of the outlet to the sea. It is at this estuary that today the liturgy of the Ascension invites us to look; towards the eternal destiny that draws our hearts. And if we we can lift our gaze is because Jesus Christ, the new and living way (cf. Heb 10:20), has opened up for us access, as today’s Preface well underlines: “The Lord Jesus did not abandon us in poverty of our human condition but he preceded us to the eternal abode, to give us the serene confidence that where he, our head and firstborn is, we too will always be members of him, united in the same glory”. That Jesus, at the end of the forty days, ascends to the Father means that human existence has no final outcome except communion with God. And here we also have a paradox of faith: yes he accesses the fullness of life by passing through death; one ascends into glory certainly but not without first descending into the humiliation of the grave. We understand it; it is the paschal dynamic, at work in us by virtue of baptism. Dead and resurrected with Christ we are introduced into the abyss of God’s love, as described by John Paul II: «My space is within you. Your space is within me». God and man—yes!—host each other. This is the goal of the Ascension: the bosom of the Trinity, where Jesus, crucified and risen, has entered first, raising our humanity alongside the Father (cf. Collect of the Holy Mass). Today’s celebration is therefore a wonderful synthesis of hope (looking upwards) and realism (looking down). Keeping the two extremes together (heaven and earth) will avoid the stumbling block of an alienating spiritualism as well as an empty and therefore tragic immanentism.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Santa Maria – Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey