It is in the wake of the Ascension that we always and everywhere awake and find\u00a0ourselves. The liturgy expresses this, since it is the Ascended Christ who acts liturgically\u00a0and to Whom, liturgically, we turn. But the Ascension itself conditions more than our\u00a0liturgical life; it conditions our life as such. Humanity exists, everyone lives and acts, in a\u00a0world which the Ascension alone defines and interprets; always in its wake, the world\u00a0means only what the Ascension shows.<\/p>\n
And of course in one way what the Ascension shows is, quite literally, nothing. It is the\u00a0event par excellence<\/em> of withdrawal and of absence. This absence contains \u00ad- and can also\u00a0sanctify -\u00ad every other experience we have of something or someone missing<\/em>. When the\u00a0Incarnate Word ascends, the world in a certain way loses Him, and He, in a certain way,\u00a0loses the world. Everything else we can lose finds a home and a meaning in this, Divine-human, way of loss. In the Ascension the Word made flesh and the flesh of the world\u00a0become absent to each other. The Ascension should therefore be the Patron Feast of our\u00a0human experiences of bereavement \u00ad- of times, of places, of things and of each other. For\u00a0in the Ascension, God has lived through these experiences, as He lives through everything\u00a0human, taking us to Himself, letting Himself be nailed to us<\/em>, so as to heal and transform\u00a0the flesh, making it become, in a new way, what it always was, from the beginning \u00ad His\u00a0own.<\/p>\n But still \u00ad- the horizon of meaning which the Ascension has fashioned for us is,\u00a0unavoidably, something negative -\u00ad even if, in a further stage, this negativity is\u00a0transformed. Because of the Ascension, the Word made flesh no longer situates Himself\u00a0among the flesh of the world. He no longer dwells among us as we desire to dwell with\u00a0each other, face to face, flesh to flesh. The Incarnate Word, we believe, is the reason of the\u00a0world; but in the Ascension the reason of the world, unearthed or discovered in the\u00a0Incarnation, is un\u00ad-earthed<\/em> in a new sense, one seemingly opposed, even contradictory, to\u00a0the first: for by the Ascension the world\u2019s reason is uprooted and, returning to His Father,\u00a0He seems to become, for us, other\u00ad-worldly<\/em>.<\/p>\n Now these ways of speaking are, I think, true -\u00ad and we perhaps need to dwell at greater\u00a0length than usual, and more deeply, on the meaning of the Ascension as a kind of loss \u00ad-\u00a0even, at first sight, a kind of reversal<\/em> of the Incarnation. But although true, and\u00a0important, such a line of thought is also only provisional. What -\u00ad again -\u00ad does the\u00a0Ascension mean? It means that the world cannot be with Christ as the world naturally\u00a0desires to be; it means that Christ does not give Himself to the world as the world would\u00a0naturally ask or even demand. But perhaps that is the whole point.<\/p>\n We instinctively want our being with each other to take form in a certain way. Think of\u00a0Mary Magdalene in the garden, in the moment when the Risen Christ manifests Himself\u00a0to her, in a wholly unprecedented and inexpressible way. At once she seeks to convert<\/em> this\u00a0manifestation, to transpose<\/em> it into terms she already knows. She desires to be with Him\u00a0by trying to change Him into a body she can cling to, thereby trying to ensure<\/em>, if she can,\u00a0that He will be present to her as He was before. But can<\/em> she? No -\u00ad He will not show\u00a0Himself to her in that way. He has been bodily present to her all along, since the first\u00a0moments of their encounter, but somehow, despite His bodily presence, she does not\u00a0recognize Him; it is, in the end, only His voice<\/em>, His call<\/em>, that manifests Him to her. But\u00a0how instinctively, how naturally, she tries -\u00ad literally -\u00ad to grasp the Resurrection, as if it\u00a0were nothing but the renewal of a familiar presence, a reassuring return to the measurable\u00a0here and now after the temporary obscurity of death and burial. Mary wants to banish\u00a0absence, and to fill it with the only kind of presence that she knows.<\/p>\n But after pronouncing her name, what does Christ say to her? Noli me tangere -\u00ad do not\u00a0hold me<\/em>. Why does He say this? Because<\/em>, He explains, I have not yet ascended to the\u00a0Father<\/em>. Now what do these mysterious words mean?<\/p>\n We should first recall the manifest negativity of His impending absence. This is already\u00a0hinted at in the enigmatic and elusive quality of the Resurrection appearances themselves,\u00a0including this one to Mary in the garden; it is rendered definitive in the Ascension. Now\u00a0the whole intangibility of this way of presence and absence is not so much a matter of first\u00a0one and then the other. Instead presence and absence seem to be simultaneous and to\u00a0interpenetrate: in the garden He is present to Mary in His body -\u00ad He is there before her,\u00a0she is speaking to Him -\u00ad but at the same time absent to her recognition -\u00ad at least, until He\u00a0speaks her name, which then indeed manifests His presence to her, but at the very\u00a0moment in which a bodily absence is imposed by His repudiation of her touch. So what is\u00a0going go<\/em>?<\/p>\n The reason He gives for depriving her, for denying her the reassurance of holding onto\u00a0Him, even while holding onto Him is still possible, is that He will soon be Ascending to\u00a0the Father. Is He doing more than trying to acclimatize her to the impending negativity -\u00ad a\u00a0kind of tough love deployed in light of His irreversible disappearance? Perhaps that is part\u00a0of it. We too must become acclimatized to the fact that He isn\u2019t here. More precisely, we\u00a0must become acclimatized to the fact that He isn\u2019t here as<\/em> a fact -\u00ad by which I mean He\u00a0isn\u2019t present as facts are present, uncontested and uncontestable, discernible to anyone,\u00a0conformed and subject to our demand to see and to know.<\/p>\n But there is more to it than that, something by which He leads us beyond mere\u00a0resignation to the negativity of absence. In His words to Mary, He means also that she\u00a0must not try to hold onto Him in the way she desires<\/em>, but must instead await learning\u00a0how to hold onto Him in an entirely new way<\/em>, which she will not begin to see until His\u00a0absence is made definitive: for it is only in the light -\u00ad or obscurity -\u00ad of that absence that\u00a0she can be taught this new presence and live it out.<\/p>\n It is, then, as if He says to her: Do not hold onto me as you now desire to, because such\u00a0desires are destined to pass away. They will pass away first in the negativity of my\u00a0absence, once I have ascended to the Father; and then, afterwards, they will pass away\u00a0into something else, in a transformation in your understanding of what it means to\u00a0touch me and be touched by me: such a transformation will come, but it is possible only\u00a0by way of the absence which denies the presence you crave.<\/em><\/p>\n There is, then, an absence which denies the presence we crave.<\/em> But this absence is in fact\u00a0a kind of sustaining architecture, it is the persisting form that makes possible another and\u00a0entirely unique kind of presence. This new presence passes beyond the possession of\u00a0Christ as object, even a sacred object, held fast before us as Mary Magdalene desired to\u00a0hold Him fast, compelling Him, as it were, to be real according to what is finally a very\u00a0impoverished conception of reality. Getting beyond this, living with the manifest absence\u00a0of Christ as object, is the condition for receiving His presence as the gift of the Spirit.<\/p>\n There is an astonishing passage in St Paul which takes us to the heart of this. He who\u00a0came down is the same One who went up<\/em>, St Paul tells us -\u00ad the same One who went up,\u00a0above and beyond the heavens, so as to fill the whole universe with His presence<\/em>. In St\u00a0Paul\u2019s vision of this, it is as if the Ascension liquefies<\/em> the objective presence of Christ in\u00a0the world -\u00ad His being here or there, fascinating us as a presence we can grasp -\u00ad and gives\u00a0Him to us, instead, as the very life of things themselves. This liquefaction is the\u00a0inconceivably generous and transforming self\u00adoffering of His love. No wonder He tells\u00a0Mary not to hold onto Him in the old way. It is as if, starting from the Ascension, His life\u00a0is offered to us as passing entirely into our own –\u00a0as His Eucharistic Body and Blood pass\u00a0entirely into us in communion, and are given to us only so that they may pass in this way,\u00a0from sacred object to indwelling life. Starting from the Ascension, He offers Himself as a\u00a0presence that fills us, and the whole universe, from within<\/em>.<\/p>\n Christ speaks of the Counsellor, whom I will send to you from the Father, even the Spirit\u00a0of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, [and who] will bear witness to me<\/em>. Now what\u00a0witness to Christ does the Spirit bear? He bears forms of witness which make possible\u00a0Christian life as such. And to speak of the Christian life<\/em> as such is to speak, not first and\u00a0foremost of our adhesion to the Gospels, the Creeds or the teachings of the Church \u00ad-\u00a0indispensable though all this be -\u00ad but rather, first and foremost, it is to speak of an\u00a0interior gift, a gift from the heart and to the heart. It is by the Spirit that we can have Faith\u00a0at all, by Him that we can pray, by Him that Christ is made present in the Eucharist so as\u00a0to feed us, and it is by the Spirit that whatever Christians do and whatever they suffer\u00a0attain their Christ\u00ad-like fertility and spontaneity. The Spirit witnesses to Christ, not by\u00a0witnessing to an object external to us or beyond us, to someone or something here, or\u00a0there, that we can grasp. The Spirit witnesses to Christ by conveying Christ to us\u00a0interiorly, by expounding Him to us and in us as life<\/em>, so that our very lives are conformed\u00a0to His. This conformity, the seed of eternity in us, can take place only in the shadow,\u00a0sometimes experienced as darkness, left by His worldly absence. In that absence, He gives\u00a0Himself not to be held onto, but to be received and lived, now and forever.<\/p>\n By Fr Philip Cleevely, Cong. Orat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is in the wake of the Ascension that we always and everywhere awake and find\u00a0ourselves. The liturgy expresses this, since it is the Ascended Christ who acts liturgically\u00a0and to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Ascension-cropped.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8brX6-4nV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16859"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16865,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859\/revisions\/16865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}