Light from the Altar - The Ascension

One noon in early summer, nearly two thousand years ago, a group of men knelt in rapture upon the summit of a mountain. Their dress was that of poor Jewish fishermen, their hands were horny and stained with sun and exposure. But the look on their faces was heavenly, the pose of their bodies ecstatic. In their uplifted eyes, feasting on a distant vision, shone a light not of the earth. Higher, still higher the vision rose, drawing still upwards the thrilled gaze of the men. As they knelt transfixed, a cloud softly floating by threw a shadow on the upturned faces. The vision was gone. Yet the men knelt on without movement. At last a voice broke the stillness, and two men in white garments stood by them and said: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to Heaven? This Jesus Who is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come as you have seen Him going into Heaven." They then understood the word that Jesus had said that morning to them. "It is not for you to know the times or moments which the Father has put in His own power," was made clear to their minds. What did it matter when! He would come again in might and power as surely as He had ascended. Oh, they could wait now, could live and believe and work in that hope. "And adoring they went back into Jerusalem with great joy." All selfishness, incredulity, and hardness of heart seems to have left them at that moment. Though they were alone in the struggle they were not saddened nor discouraged. Their great joy was rooted in Heaven; nothing henceforth would rob them of it.

This was the first Ascension Day. Six weeks had passed since our Lord rose from the dead and came back to His own. He had been with them at intervals reassuring them, comforting and instructing them, and showing them that all was forgiven and that a great future was before them. It had been a dear, familiar time, so joined on to their former life that they had fallen into their old ways with our Lord and He with them. The sorrows of the Passion and the joys of the Resurrection had changed them very little. Only that very morning Jesus had eaten with them and had upbraided them for their incredulity and hardness) of heart. For they had doubted the word of those who had seen Him and who had been His messengers to them. As He led them as far as Bethania, to the Mount of Olives, they had asked Him that unthinking question about the coming of the Kingdom, and He had rebuked them in His own decided way. But in the same sentence He pours consolation into their hearts by telling them they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, that they shall be His witnesses throughout all Judea, Samaria, and even to the uttermost bounds of the earth; that the power of working miracles with not only remain with them, but shall be given to all who believe in His name. How they must have recalled these promises of the Master as they returned the same way He had led them in the morning, as they crossed the brook Kedron, climbed the steep defile, threaded the narrow streets back into the Upper Room. Once there they scarcely left it at all, so intent were they to fulfill literally our Lord's injunction - to stay in Jerusalem until they had been imbued with power from on high. So "with Mary the Mother of Jesus" the eleven Apostles prepared for their mission: "to go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature."

"With Mary the Mother of Jesus!" See how early in Church history Mary is a central figure! The Apostles have an important work to do - one, we might imagine, unsuited for the interference of women: one that required quiet, strength, guidance, comfort. Unspiritual though the Apostles were at this time, yet they were keen enough to know that what they had lost in Jesus they would find in Mary. So John took them to his own, and they dwelt with him and Mary, persevering in prayer for the nine happy days of the first novena.

Have we anything to put in order before Pentecost, before the coming of the Holy Ghost? If so, let us take it to Mary, and, like the Apostles, ask her help and guidance and comfort. Let us be found during this latest novena "with Mary the Mother of Jesus."

- taken from Light from the Altar, edited by Father James J McGovern, 1906