Acts 20.16-18, 28-26

John 17.1-13

The Feast of the LORD’s Ascension into Heaven in the same body in which He was crucified, dead and buried and risen from the dead, is the hidden heart of the Gospel. It is the work that the Father gave His Son, Our LORD Jesus Christ, to do. It is the work that was made possible when the LORD finished the work of creating the world on the Cross (Gn 2.3 LXX, Jn 19.30).

For listen: God created Adam from the dust, and raised him to life from the dust – as the Holy Spirit would raise the New Adam to life from the ‘dust of death’ (Ps 22.15) – by breathing into him the ‘Breath of life,’ as the risen LORD Jesus breathed His Holy Spirit on His disciples in the Upper Room (thereby establishing the witness of the apostolic doctrine in the Holy Spirit), and as the Father sent down the Holy Spirit on the whole assembly of disciples in the Upper Room on Pentecost.

To live and breathe, to move and have our being in the Holy Spirit is the purpose God created us for. For God did not create death, nor did He create man for death. He created man for immortality; He created him in the image of His own eternity (Wisd 1.15, 2.23).

But man disobeyed the divine command. He chose to love his own beauty over the Wisdom of God, the Source of Beauty. With that, following St Macarios (3^rd Cent.): ‘the serpent entered in and made himself master of the house, and became like a second soul beside the soul. Sin entering into the soul has become like a member of it, and is united with the bodily man, and therefore many unclean thoughts spring up in the heart because the deadly and unclean toxin of the serpent is entwined and mingled with the soul. (Hom 15.35, p. 123).

But, the Holy Spirit, says Wisdom, ‘will not enter into a soul ‘shaped by evil’ [kakotecnon] nor dwell in a body that is given to sin. The Spirit flees from deceit; it goes up away from thoughts [logismoi] that are without understanding and it departs when unrighteousness comes in.’ (Wisd 1.4-5)

This word from Wisdom takes us directly to Ezekiel. He looked, it says, and behold: ‘The Glory of the LORD departed from the inner court of the Temple [in Jerusalem]; it went up from the city [of Jerusalem] and stood on the Mountain opposite the city.’ (Eze 10.3&11.23). The prophet was seeing in a vision the LORD Jesus Christ, the Glory of God, leaving the Temple on Palm Sunday, and leaving the city to stand on the Mountain of Golgotha opposite the city.

On the Cross on the mountain of Golgotha opposite the city, Our Savior finished the work of creation that He had begun in the beginning (Gn 2.3 LXX). By His obedience to the Father to the point of death on the Cross (Phil 5.7-8), He expelled the serpent from the human heart. He destroyed the death and corruption that had taken root in Adam’s heart, making it to be deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt (Jer 17.9). He emptied the tomb of our heart of death, and He created in us a new heart of flesh, a living heart in whom it is no longer we who live but God who lives in us (Gal 2.20). Then He rolled the stone away from the tomb of our heart (another way of saying that He emptied it of death), having made our heart the Fountain of Life because in His Resurrection, He Who Is the Fountain of Life (Jer 2.19) came forth from the tomb as the Mighty River seen by the prophets (e.g. Eze 47.1-12), and so the Proverb is now made perfect: ‘Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of Life eternal.’ (Prov 4.23)

By His death, the LORD Jesus Christ, the New Adam, opened the tomb of Adam’s heart onto the fragrant garden of Eden. He burst the old wineskin of our old man. At the bottom of the Jordan – the Mighty River seen by the prophets – on the bed in the tomb of our heart, He placed the wedding garment of His own Glory, the New Wineskin of His own Body, so that those who love Him and believe in Him could take it up and clothe themselves in it. And now, when we partake of His body and blood in Holy Eucharist, we fill the New Wineskin that clothed us as the wedding garment in our Baptism with the New Wine of His Holy Resurrection.

All of this He had said He would do through His prophets: ‘I will sprinkle you with clean water (the Holy Spirit), and you shall be purged from all your uncleanness [the tomb of your heart will be made empty of death], and I will cleanse you from all your idols, and I will give you a new heart, and will put a new spirit in you, and I will extract the heart of stone out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit in you  and will cause you to walk in mine ordinances, and to keep my judgments and do them.’ (Eze 36.25-27)

All of this was the work the Savior finished in His death and burial – when He filled the tomb of our heart with Himself, the Resurrection and the Life! It was necessary for the LORD God to become flesh so that He could die in our flesh and thereby destroy our death by His death. This is the work that He finished on the Cross, so that He could then accomplish the last work of creation that He had begun in the beginning. That last work is what He finished in His Ascension when, in the same Body and Blood in which He was crucified, dead and buried, having cleansed us from all unrighteousness so that the Holy Spirit could now dwell in us, He united us to the Father in Heaven. That is, He saved us. That is, He deified us. Here on earth, in our heart, He opened the Gates of Heaven. Here in the Church, we stand in Heaven even as we stand in the world.

Having become Man through His Most Beloved and All-Holy Virgin Mother, without ceasing to be God, through the same Virgin Theotokos, the entrance to the tomb of our heart, now a bridal chamber, has been opened for us to enter. If we want to, we can become gods (Ps 86.12), partakers of the divine nature (2 Pt 1.4), communicants of life eternal (Heb 2.14 & 3.14; Jn 6.54-56). And, far from ceasing to be human, in this we actually become truly human – for this is what it is to be Man.

The Feast of the LORD’s Ascension into Heaven proclaims what the world cannot know because it does not keep the LORD’s commandments. This was our Gospel reading yesterday: ‘If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day – on this Day, the Feast of the Savior’s Ascension – you will know that I [am] in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." [Jhn 14:15-21]

The Great Mystery of the LORD’s Ascension into heaven is the hidden heart of the Gospel that His Passion – which was visible, happening on this side of the grave – opened onto like a gate opening onto the deep, beyond all things, opening onto the mystery, that unseen realm beyond the gates of our birth and our death in which we come upon our origin and our end – who is Jesus Christ (Rev 22.13), the Son of God incarnate risen from the dead and ascended into heaven in glory in our human nature!

This is the theology of what the apostles saw when the risen LORD Jesus Christ was taken up out of their sight into heaven. They saw Him taken up in the same body in which He was crucified, dead and buried and risen from the dead. In that same body, He ascended in glory into the heavens and sat at the Right Hand of the Father to where He was before, from all eternity. But there is a new thing here: He is now seated at the Right Hand of the Father in our soul and body.

Ponder the marvel. The Church is the LORD’s Body, the fullness of Him who is all in all. The Church is therefore the mystery of our body and soul that is now seated, as the Body of Christ, at the Right Hand of the Father, deified in Glory. With the disciples, we should be trembling with joy, and we should be tarrying prayerfully in the New Jerusalem of our new heart, preparing ourselves for Pentecost next Sunday. On that Feast, we celebrate our Holy Baptism. That is when we joined the disciples in the Upper Room restored, in the hidden man of our heart, to our original beauty. That’s when we were united to the New Adam, Jesus Christ, and raised from the Font as ‘living souls’ in the Holy Spirit, the Breath of Life, of Our LORD, God and Savior Jesus Christ to whom be all glory, honor and worship now and ever and unto ages of ages! Amen! Most Holy Theotokos, save us!