The Second Glorious Mystery: The Ascension

This guest post is by Kathryn Heltsley, Product Marketing Copywriter for Verbum.

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?” (Acts 1:11)

God’s plan. God’s timing. God’s perfect will. These phrases are repeated over and over in the Christian life. Why do we hear them so often? Because we need to. We can’t help it—we want to know what’s coming, what we’re signing up for. Instead, we get a lot of opportunities to scratch our heads as we think, “Well that wasn’t what I was expecting!” It’s easy to get stuck “looking into heaven,” rather than to keep walking in the direction that Christ has pointed us.

The disciples are always an accurate reflection of our own humanity. The gospel narratives are full of examples where they unconsciously demonstrate their preconceptions of who Jesus was and their expectations of what that would look like (see Mt 16:22, for example).

Father Vincent Nagel, author of Life Promises Life—and a dear friend to all who have met him for more than a minute—once described the scene of the Ascension with his characteristic humor: “So the disciples crowd around him, asking, ‘So are you gonna save us from the Romans now?’ Oh boy! I mean, you can just about hear Jesus slapping his palm to his forehead as he ascends in the cloud!”

The Ascension by Gustave Dore.

We all do this. We are designed with expectations. The very fact of our design implies an answer. But the form our expectations take—and the reality of the answer—can be a constant challenge as we stumble along the path of faith. Here, Jesus tells the disciples “not to concern themselves with God’s timing in fulfilling His plan” (Acts 1:7 Faithlife Study Bible). Ouch.

It’s not as though the disciples had pulled this idea of rescue from Roman oppression out of a hat. They had good reason to hope for Jesus overturning Roman rule. But the actual event of Christ’s presence in the world revealed a different plan. The openness of the disciples to receive it, however confusedly, is the essential triumph of humanity. And what they received through their faith, God’s presence inside each of them in the person of the Holy Spirit, was truly above and beyond anything they could have thought to hope for. And so it is with us all.