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Thursday, May 25, 2017


Liturgia Latina: The Ascension of our Lord


THE ASCENSION OF OUR LORD
From “The St. Andrew Daily Missal” (1937)

    It is in the basilica of St. Peter, dedicated to one of the chief
witnesses of our Lord’s ascension, that this mystery which marks the end
of our  Lord’s earthly life, is “this day” (Collect) kept.

    In the forty days which followed His resurrection, our Redeemer laid
the foundations of His Church to which He was going to send the Holy Ghost.

    All the Master’s teachings are summed up in the Epistle and Gospel
for today. Then He left this earth and the Introit, Collect, Epistle,
Alleluia, Gospel, Offertory, Secret, Preface and Communion celebrate His
glorious ascension into Heaven, where the souls He had freed from Limbo
escort Him (Alleluia), and enter in His train into the heavenly kingdom,
where they share more fully in His Divinity.

    The ascension sets before us the duty of raising our hearts to God. So,
in the Collect, we are led to ask that we may dwell with Christ in spirit
in the heavenly realms, where we are called one day to dwell in our risen
bodies.

    During the octave the Credo is said: “I believe in one Lord Jesus
Christ, the only-begotten Son of God… Who ascended into heaven…  He
sitteth at the right hand of the Father”  The Gloria speaks in the same
sense: “O Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son…  Who sittest at the
right hand of the Father, have mercy upon  us.” In the Proper Preface
which is said until Pentecost, we  give thanks to God because His Son, the
risen Christ, “after His resurrection appeared and showed Himself to all
His disciples; and while they beheld Him, was lifted up into heaven”. In
the same way, during the whole octave, a Proper Communicantes of the feast
is said, in which the Church reminds us  that she is keeping the day on
which the only-begotten  Son of God set at the right hand of His glory the
substance of our frail human nature, in which He had united Himself in the
mystery of the Incarnation.

    We are reminded daily in the liturgy at the Offertory  Suscipe Sancta
Trinitas, and in the Canon Unde et memores, that at our Lord’s command
the Holy Sacrifice is being offered in memory of the “blessed passion of
the same Christ Thy Son our Lord,” and also His resurrection from hell
and His glorious ascension into heaven.

    The truth is that man is saved only by the mysteries of the passion and
resurrection untied with that of the ascension. “Through Thy death and
burial, through Thy holy resurrection, through Thy admirable ascension,
deliver us, O Lord” (Litany of the Saints).

    Let us offer the divine Sacrifice to God in memory of the glorious
ascension of His Son (Suscipe, Unde et memores); while we nourish within
our souls an  ardent desire for heaven, that “delivered from present
dangers,” we may “attain to eternal life” (Secret).

    Every  parish priest celebrates Mass for the people of his parish.

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