In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit!

Christ ascended into Heaven by His Divine power. The cloud which hid Him from the Apostoles’ eyes wasn’t the means of transference but God’s honor, as the glory of the God of Israel filled the Tent of Meeting in the form of the cloud. “The cloud then covered the Tent of Meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the Dwelling” (Exodus 40, 34). His location after Ascension is “higher than Heavens”.

Why do the Apostles having separated from Christ after His Ascension, return to Jerusalem without sorrow but with joy?

First of all they remembered the promise of Christ, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt. 28, 20). He, who is present everywhere and do everything, is always with us and His God and His mankind: in the world, in the Church, during the Eucharist, in our life and soul.

The Ascension of Christ strengthens our faith which consists in our belief in invisible. Great was the merit of the Apostles, as through the visible mankind of Jesus Christ they believed in His God Nature. But still greater is the merit of those who believes in Him not having seen Him, “Blessed are they who didn’t see, and yet believed” (John, 20.29).

The Ascension of Christ confirms our hope. The very fact that Christ ascended the human nature to the Heaven, gives us hope that we will be there too. In addition to this Christ Himself said, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John, 14, 3).

In the very word “Ascension” there is joy, it is as if challenge to the so-called “laws of nature” always drawing us down. And here just the opposite – lightness, flight, endless ascending.

What is the essence of great joy of this feast which lasts up to our days and bursts into such amazing light on this day. Christ as if has left us, it is as if the day of parting. But there is no parting, as Christ said, “I am with you to the end of the age”, and all joy of Christian faith is from the consciousness of His presence. The Ascension is the feast of the Heaven opened for a person, the Heaven as a new and eternal home, dwelling, the Heaven as our genuine homeland. Sin has separated the earth and the Heaven and has made us worldly, turning to the world and living only by worldly life. Sin is betrayal of the Heaven in the soul. The Lord destroyed these ties and by His example showed us the way to our genuine homeland. Amen.

By rev. G.Sergeev