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.