TOPIC 11

RESURRECTION, ASCENSION,
AND SECOND COMING

Part 2 – The Ascension

 JESUS’ ASCENSION

Scriptural How is Jesus

Why 40 Days
Account now made present to us?
after the Resurrection?

Jesus is now more intimately How do we encounter Jesus ascends and comes back A call to holiness
present the Risen Christ? through the Church and apostolate
to us than before
 Scriptural
Account
“... you shall receive power when
the Holy Spirit has come upon
you; and you shall be my
witnesses in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and Samaria and to the end
of the earth.” 

And when he had said this, he

9 

was lifted up, and a cloud took

him out of their sight. 

And while they were gazing

10 

into heaven as he went, behold,

two men stood by them in white
robes, 11 and said, “Men of
Galilee, why do you stand looking
into heaven? This Jesus, who was
taken up from you into heaven,
will come in the same way as you
saw him go into heaven.”
Acts 1:8-11
 Why 40 days
after the Resurrection?
“3 To them he presented himself alive after his passion
by many proofs, ….speaking of the kingdom of God. 
4 
And he charged them ….to wait for the promise of the Father… you shall
be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

Acts 1:3

◦ Jesus was preparing them for a totally new manner

of His Presence, begun in the Passion and Resurrection
and completed in the Ascension (cf Jn 12:24: Grain of wheat)

◦ “17 Jesus said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to
the Father; but go to my brethren
and say to them, I am ascending to my Father..”
Jn 20:17

◦ a withdrawal of his sensible presence

belonging to this passing, corruptible world,
and its replacement with a spiritual presence
belonging to another
 How is Jesus now
made present to us?
No longer in a sensible manner
as with all mortal, corruptible bodies.

◦ but an intimate, spiritual Presence,

through the power of the Holy Spirit

◦ “In that day you will know that I am in my Father,

and you in me, and I in you… 
If a man loves me, he will keep my word,
and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our
abode with him.”
Jn 14:20

◦ the two disciples of Emmaus rejoiced

when the Risen Jesus, whom they had just recognized, immediately
disappeared from their sight.
- Card. Ratzinger

◦ “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed…. for

behold, the kingdom of God
is within you.”
Luke 17:21
 Jesus is now
more intimately present
to us than before
No longer in an intermittent manner, but permanently.

◦ “I will be with you until the consummation of the world.”

Mt 28:20

◦ No longer in an external way (“I’m ‘here’, you’re ‘there.’”),

but most intimate, filling our minds and hearts –our entire being

◦ “Christ in you, our hope of glory.”

Col 1:27

◦ “I am in travail until Christ is fully formed in you.”

Gal 4:19. Cf. Rev 12: the Woman clothed in the sun, but in travail.

◦ “22 The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them

(i.e., the Holy Spirit), that they may be one even as we are one, 
23 
I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one.”
Jn 17
How do we encounter the
Risen Christ?
The 1st 2 apparitions of the Risen Christ (Jn 20)

◦ “Touch My Wounds” Christ Crucified, Died,

and Risen no longer belongs to this corruptible and passing world

◦ “He breathed on them... ‘Receive the Holy Spirit!’”

 the Holy Spirit comes as fruit of union with Christ Crucified.

◦ “If anyone wants to follow me, let him take up his cross...”:
Mt 16. 24.

◦ “You believe, Thomas, because you have seen me.

Blessed are those who have not seen, but believe.”. The Eucharist. Baptism.
Confession.

◦ Faith, hope and charity: “theological” virtues “infused”

into our souls by the Holy Spirit.

◦ “As the Father has sent me, so I send you...”

(“Gifted to give.”). Cf. Jn 13:34: “By this will all men know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another.”
 Jesus ascends
and comes back
through the Church
The Ascension of Jesus is not an historical event belonging to the past,
but is now present and operative in the hearts of believers.

◦ “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives

(to the new life of the Resurrection), and he gave gifts to men
(i.e., the Holy Spirit, who gives the Church ’hierarchical’ and ‘charismatic’ gifts). 9 He
ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.”
Eph 4:8

◦ the spiritual life is marked by a continuous “ascensional thrust”

to the Father in heaven. Constant inner conversion.
St. Augustine: “Never say, ‘Enough.’”

◦ “When I am lifted up from the earth

(--the Paschal Mystery, which includes Ascension),
I will draw all things to myself (--through the Spirit)”
Jn 12:32
 A call to holiness
and apostolate
Baptism: a constant summons to holiness and apostolate.

◦ “3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried
therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk
in newness of life… 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead
to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Rom 6:3

◦ “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are
above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set
your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on
earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in
God.”
Col 3:1

◦ God’s glory and the salvation of souls

 TOPIC 11
RESURRECTION, ASCENSION,
AND SECOND COMING

Part 2 – The Ascension