Forty days after the Resurrection, Jesus Christ ascended bodily into heaven from the Mount of Olives. This wasn’t a metaphor. He rose into the sky while His disciples watched, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
We celebrate this as one of the twelve Great Feasts of the Church year. The date moves because it’s always forty days after Pascha. That means it falls on a Thursday, which can make it tricky for folks working twelve-hour shifts at the refineries to get to the service. But it’s worth the effort.
What Actually Happened
The Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts give us the details. Christ led His disciples out to Bethany, near the Mount of Olives. He lifted His hands and blessed them. And while He was blessing them, He was carried up into heaven. Two angels appeared and told the stunned disciples that this same Jesus would return in the same way they’d seen Him go.
This wasn’t Jesus shedding His humanity to return to pure divinity. That’s the mistake. He ascended as both God and man. The human nature He took on in the Incarnation didn’t get left behind like a costume. It went with Him into the presence of the Father, glorified and deified but still human.
Why It Matters
Here’s what we believe about the Ascension. When Christ entered heaven in His human body, He opened the way for all of us. Human nature now sits at the right hand of the Father. That’s not just Christ’s personal victory. It’s ours too, because we’re united to Him.
The Ascension completes what the Crucifixion and Resurrection began. On the Cross, Christ destroyed death. In the Resurrection, He trampled down death by death. But in the Ascension, He brings human nature into the divine presence. This is theosis, the whole point of our salvation. God became man so that man might become god, not in essence, but by grace, by participation in the divine life.
Without the Ascension, the story’s incomplete. Christ doesn’t just defeat death and leave us here. He takes us with Him, in His own person first, and then in ours through the work of the Holy Spirit.
The Connection to Pentecost
Ten days after the Ascension comes Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descends on the Apostles. Christ promised this before He ascended. He told them to wait in Jerusalem for the gift the Father had promised. The Ascension and Pentecost work together. Christ ascends to the Father, and the Spirit descends to us, making us participants in that same divine life Christ brought into heaven.
This is how we live the Ascension now. We’re not just waiting for Christ to return someday. We’re already ascending with Him through the life of the Church, through the Mysteries, through prayer. Every time we receive Communion, we’re participating in the body that ascended. Every time we pray, we’re speaking to the One who sits at the right hand of the Father and ever lives to make intercession for us.
How We Celebrate It
The liturgical texts for the feast are full of joy. The troparion says, “O Christ our God, You ascended in Glory and gladdened Your disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit.” That gladness is key. The disciples weren’t devastated when Christ ascended. They returned to Jerusalem with great joy, Luke tells us. They understood this was good news.
The icon of the Ascension shows Christ in a mandorla, that almond-shaped glory, being carried up by angels, while the Theotokos and the Apostles stand below, looking up. Some of them point to heaven. Others look at each other, as if to say, “Did you see that?” It’s a moment of wonder, not loss.
We often have a procession during the feast, moving upward if the church has steps, or at least moving in a way that symbolizes ascent. It’s a physical reminder that we’re called upward, that our citizenship is in heaven, that we’re headed somewhere.
Fr. Thomas Hopko used to say that the Ascension shows us where we’re going. We’re not just saved from something. We’re saved for something. And that something is participation in the life of the Holy Trinity, sharing in the glory that Christ brought into heaven when He ascended.
If you’ve never been to the Ascension service, come this year. It falls on a weekday, which means it’s easy to miss. But it’s one of those feasts that changes how you see everything else. The Resurrection isn’t just about Jesus coming back from the dead. It’s about where He went next, and where He’s taking us.
