An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

The Ascension Sabbath

Dearest, Christ is Ascended!

Today our Lord ascends to heaven with a shout. This both fulfills the Resurrection of the Pascha season, which just ended yesterday, and points us toward Pentecost ,which will arrive in 10 days. For the Ascension reminds us of our need as Orthodox Christians to be looking up always to the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, and invoking him through our prayer without ceasing and our way of living and participation in His Body the Church. At the Ascension, He brings our human form and nature, as He is both fully God and fully man, to sit at the right hand of God the Father, in completion of our redemption and salvation. From there, He will send us the Holy Spirit marking the full establishment of His Church as the realization of biblical Israel and the home of our salvation, through all the Church’s mysteries.

That great Orthodox saint Gregory Palamas in fact associates the Ascension with the fulfilment of the Sabbath as laid down in the law, the Sabbath which has become the day of Resurrection every day for us as Christians. I’ll share here brief selections from St. Gregory’s two homilies on the Feast of the Ascension.

The holy father writes (translation by Christopher Veniamin from St. Gregory Palamas: The Homilies):

THE JEWS KEPT THE FEAST of the Passover, the crossing from Egypt to the land of Palestine, as laid down in their law, and we have celebrated the gospel Pascha, the passage of our human nature in Christ from death to life (cf. John 5:24, 1 John 3:14), from corruption to incorruption (cf. 1 Cor. 15:42, 50). What words can express the superiority of this celebration over the solemnities of the old law and the events commemorated on its holy days? No one can adequately state how much more excellent it is. The enhypostatic Wisdom of the most high Father, God’s pre-eternal Word who is beyond all being, who was united with us in His love for mankind and lived among us (cf. John 1:14), has now revealed through His actions a cause for celebration even more distinctly superior than Easter’s excellence.

For we now celebrate the transition of our nature in Him, not just from the subterranean regions up on to the earth, but from the earth to the heaven of heavens, and to the throne above the heavens of Him who rules over all. Today the Lord not only stood with His disciples after His resurrection, but was also parted from them and was taken up into heaven as they watched (Acts 1:9–11), ascended and entered into the true Holy of Holies and sat down on the right hand of the Father, far above all principality and power and every name and honour that is known and named, either in this world, or in that which is to come, saying, “Be ye ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44). In this way He made all the days into blessed sabbaths for those who choose to obey Him perfectly, and so in this respect as well He did not abolish but fulfilled the law 

We, by contrast, are entangled in worldly affairs, but if you abstain from acquisitiveness and mutual hatred, and strive to speak the truth and be chaste, then you too will make every day a sabbath by being inactive in evil. When a day comes that is especially profitable for salvation, you must free yourselves even from blameless work and words, patiently stay in God’s Church, listen with understanding to the reading and teaching and contritely attend to the supplications, prayers and hymns to God. Thus you too will fulfil the sabbath, ordering your conduct according to the gospel of God’s grace and lifting up the eyes of your understanding towards Christ sitting above the vaults of heaven with the Father and the Spirit. He has made us sons of God, not sons adopted in name alone (cf. Rom. 8:14–17), but having become members of one family with God and each other in the communion of the divine Spirit, through Christ’s own body and blood.

Let us preserve this union with one another by indissoluble love. We should always look towards our Father in heaven, for we are no longer “of the earth, earthy”, like “the first man”, but like “the second man, the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47). “As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:48–49). As we lift up our hearts to Him we shall behold the great spectacle of our nature united for ever with the fire of the divinity. And laying aside everything to do with the coats of skins in which we were clothed because of the transgression (cf. Gen. 3:21), let us stand on holy ground (cf. Exod. 3:5), each one of us marking out his own holy ground through virtue and steadfast inclination towards God. In this way we shall be bold when God comes in fire, and run forward to be enlightened and once enlightened live with Him forever, to the glory of Him who is the light above all, the threefold Sun and sovereign Brightness, to whom belong all glory, might, honour and worship, now and for ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

St. Gregory continues:

Let us take up our cross and follow Him (Matt. 16:24), having crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Gal. 5:24), that we may be glorified together with Him (Rom. 8:17), and rise with Him, and after our resurrection be taken up to Him, as He was taken up today to the Father. He was standing in the midst of the disciples, as Luke says (Luke 24:36), or rather, He appeared to them, as Mark records (Mark 16:14) – for He did not arrive at the moment He appeared, but was always with them and showed Himself visibly when He wished. So, as He was standing in the midst of His disciples He ordered them to preach (Mark 16:15), gave them the promise of the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49) and declared that He would be with them to the end (Matt. 28:20). After these words, He lifted up His hands and blessed them, and was taken up as they watched (Luke 24:50–51). In this way He showed that those who obeyed Him would also be carried up to God after rising again. He was separated from them in the body (though as God He was with them) and, as He had promised them, He was taken up and sat on the right hand of the Father with our human flesh. As He lived, died, rose and ascended, so we all live, die and are resurrected. Not all of us, however, will attain to the ascension, but only those for whom to live is Christ, and to die for Him is gain (Phil. 1:21), those who, before they died, crucified sin through repentance and a way of life in accord with the gospel. After the resurrection of all, they alone will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (cf. 1 Thess. 4:17). A cloud also received the Lord as He ascended, as Luke relates in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:9). After the ascension the disciples did not see Him with their bodily eyes but with the eyes of their souls, yet they worshipped Him (Luke 24:52).346 Let us do the same, then, like them, stay in peace (for Jerusalem means peace) keeping peace within ourselves and with one another. Let each of us go into our own upper room (Acts 1:13), our mind, and stay there praying, and let us purify ourselves from passionate and base thoughtts. In this way we shall not miss the coming of the Comforter, and shall worship the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in spirit and in truth, now and for ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters, in the illustration of how, as St. Gregory teaches, the Ascension brings us a sense of the Sabbath every day, with our Lord in heaven with the Father, let us now also prepare in these coming 10 days to receive the Holy Spirit sent from heaven to the Church. For we are together in worship of Him the Body of Christ. He told us, although He ascended, that Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. As we empty ourselves in Christ each day, we do not assert ourselves, but find ourselves in Him, and He redeems and transforms us. Thus this season from Ascension to Pentecost puts us in reminder in body and soul, how theosis, or oneness with God’s uncreated grace, is our purpose and fulfillment in the Orthodox Church of Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit. Let us in prayerful peace await that full coming, at Pentecost with help of the prayers of the saints and especially our Lady the Theotokos. Our Lady, present at the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Pentecost, lifts us all up with her prayers to her Son, reminding us also at this time of year of her motherhood of us in the Church, and of our oneness with one another with Him, our Lord and God, through the Holy Spirit.

Christ is Ascended!