Dear Friends,

Today (as I write) is Ascension Day! I regard this as something of a "forgotten feast”. Some liturgical Christians deal with this by making the Sunday after Ascension Day the main focus of Ascensiontide as “Ascension Sunday". But the Thursday Feast of the Ascension teaches us that Our Lord ascended after a Forty Day period of appearances to His disciples when He rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday. After the Ascension there was a ten day period up to the Jewish feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was conferred upon those who were praying in a secured upper room in Jerusalem. 

There are several biblical accounts of “forty days” special periods and others of “forty years”. Let us retain the memories even if we do not fully appreciate the mysteries. The forty day period of the Easter appearances was a time when our Lord taught and re-taught His disciples when they were in a much different and, one supposes, more receptive frame of mind than formerly, before the Crucifixion. Even then it took a further ten day period of reflection after the Ascension before the main teaching could really “sink in.”

It reminds me of a recent experience of my own, when, having finished a delightfully written book by a Physics professor (Donald Scott), I knew there was an approximately five-page part of it that I had not properly grasped and I then had the opportunity (while a new air-conditioner compressor was being installed in my car) to go through the material again at greater depth and with much back-and-forth between text and diagrams. I finished that exercise with the sense that I had really learnt this time what the professor was teaching, though looking forward to a third run through to really cement the understanding in my mind.

Jesus’ first disciples, it is certain, would need that sort of repetition in what they were taught by the Professor of Truth. And so, of course, do we.

The Collect for Ascension Day is 

Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

and the Collect for the Sunday after Ascension Day is

O God the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Ascension Day Collect intriguingly refers to our ascending into heaven “in heart and mind.” This seems to emphasise a dimension of the general “resurrection of the body”, part of the Creeds that we regularly recite, that perhaps we do not consider so often. And it seems also that this “ascension in heart and mind” does not even have to wait for that time, but might be available immediately, at least in part. Yes Lord, may we also in heart and mind ascend with You and for ever dwell with You, whether now or in eternity!

The Sunday after Ascension Day Collect on the other hand, is a prayer that looks forward to a fresh inspiration: “We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before.”  Just as the disciples after Christ’s Ascension looked forward to the fresh gift of the Holy Spirit, so we look forward to that same Spirit’s strengthening us and preparing us, both now and ultimately,  for "the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before.”

For directions about the services this Sunday the 29th May 2022, the Sunday after Ascension Day, please see the website www.TruthWithLanguage.com . 

In faith in the holy Name of our Lord Jesus, who will continue to provide guidance by the Holy Spirit to all His people.

+ Nicholas