“So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.  And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them…” (NRSV, Mark 16:19,20)

On the face of it Our Lord’s ministry in Palestine seemed to collapse in utter failure, in spite of the fact that it possessed all the qualifications needed for success.  His miracles caused the same sensation then as they would do now.  We can imagine the stir and astonishment there would be if someone was going around our towns and villages curing so many people that the hospital wards stood empty because no one needed them.  No wonder the people of Capernaum were all amazed and glorified God, saying. “We have never seen anything like this!” (NRSV, Mark 2:12).

In addition to his power as a healer, he had the gift of being able to hold vast crowds spellbound by his words for as long as he liked and wherever he liked.  The general opinion was aptly summed up by the Temple guards, “Never has anyone spoken like this!” (NRSV, John 7:46).  As a result, he was never at a loss for an audience.  Wherever he might be, people flocked to him from every quarter so that it seemed in the words of his enemies, “…the world has gone after him!” (NRSV, John 12:19).

And yet, what happened?  The hearts of the people in the Lakeside towns, where most of his miracles had been done, remained untouched and his acquaintances in Nazareth actually thought of killing him.  And the same reception met him in Jerusalem.  The religious leaders, so far from supporting his campaign to convert and cleanse the nation, were moved by envy to plot his death.  And on Good Friday the city mob put pressure on Pilate to have him crucified.  So the seeming failure of his mission was completed by the desertion of his picked followers and by his own execution attended as it was by public ignominy and shame.

And yet, although Jesus had failed to win the hearts of his fellow countrymen, he had wholly succeeded in his mission.  For he had come from Heaven to achieve something vastly greater than the conversion of Palestine.  He had come to face and master in his own Person, the power of evil, so that in his greater power his followers everywhere might accomplish that same mastery in their own hearts and lives, replacing hatred with love; falsehood with truth; callousness with compassion; immorality with purity; and love of self with love for God.  His own victory over evil was achieved on the Cross and was proclaimed by his Resurrection.

During the following 40 days he appeared to his Apostles and completed his training of them in preparation for the worldwide task on which he was about to send them.  So on Ascension Day he returned to Heaven and resumed his place in that eternal and supernatural life which is the background of the Universe, and thus he was able to assure his disciples of his continual Presence with them, even to the end of the world.

We sometimes speak of Our Lord’s ministry as lasting only three years.  It is truer to say that it has already lasted around 2000 years.  That is why St Luke in his preface to the Acts of the Apostles describes the Gospel which bears his name, as an account, not of all that Jesus did and taught, but rather of all that “he began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up…” (RSV Catholic edition, Acts 1:1, our emphasis).  For the Ascension marked the transition between the close of his public ministry in Palestine and the commencement of his ministry throughout the world in the new age of the Holy Spirit.  And St Luke gave practical expression to that truth by making the Ascension the link between his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.

Through the great outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost – his Father’s Spirit and his own – the Ascended Christ, now present with us wherever we are, is able to touch our life at every point.  All that he achieved by his life and death and Resurrection, he freely gives to his Church and to those of its members who are united to him through faith, that “secret and inward surrender of the will which places the life of the believer in the sphere of the life of Jesus”. (1) (our emphasis).

So all through the centuries which have elapsed since that day, the Ascended Christ has been accomplishing his work of salvation at all times and in all places by delivering men, women and children from the dominion of moral and spiritual darkness and transferring them to his Kingdom of moral and spiritual light; turning sinners into penitents and penitents into Saints, building up his Body the Church, “until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (NRSV, Ephesians 4:13).

Reference

1. Rackham, R.B. (11th edition) (1930) The Acts of the Apostles.  An exposition, London: Methuen.  The 8th edition (1919) is available from: http://archive.org/details/actsofapostlesex00rack (Accessed 22 April 2012) (Internet).