Many Christians meet Easter with the rush of joy that the holiest day of the year demands. We feast, celebrate, and ponder Christ’s victory over death with appropriate levels of fun and prayer. But after a few weeks, life slowly begins to return to normal, and we can easily find ourselves forgetting about the ongoing Paschal celebration. As the Easter season draws to a close, the Feast of the Ascension gives us one last opportunity to ponder the joy of Easter and what it means for us as Christians. Specifically, the Ascension reveals to us what we someday will become.
In the time between Easter Sunday and Ascension, Jesus not only reminds us of His victory over death, but also that he has a physical, resurrected body. We know this because the Bible tells us in the Gospels, “They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them” (Luke 24:42-43). Additionally, Jesus tells Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side” (John 20:27). The Gospels tell us this to let us know that Jesus isn’t a ghost, that He truly rose from the dead.
Jesus reveals to us in his body what we will become. We don’t just become spirits after the general resurrection, we rise, body and soul, from the dead. Just like Jesus. In the Book of Acts, we read, “And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” (Acts 1:9) This verse mirrors the way that God assumed Enoch and Elijah into Heaven. Jewish tradition at the time of Jesus held that Enoch and Elijah’s bodies went with them, and the Catholic tradition carries this on. Thus, when Jesus ascends to Heaven, body and soul, He signals to us the nature of our life in eternity with him. He tells us that we will have a bodily existence in eternity.
The resurrection and the ascension prove that we will have our bodies in eternity. This Ascension, take some time to ponder an embodied eternity with our Lord.
Il Cielo by Marcantonio Bassetti
(Marco Antonio Bassetti, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/
Chris Tarantino is the Communications Director for TOBET. He studied History at The University at Texas A&M and has written for the Tennessee Register and Nashville Catholic.
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