Sadness & Joy

There is a sadness in this day. The Paschal season is over - no longer do we sing “Christ is Risen.” There is a sadness in this day. The burial shroud is removed from the Holy Table and put away until next year. There is a sadness in this day. Our Lord has left us staring at the sky.

We sing at Vespers:

“O Lord and Giver of Life, when the apostles saw you ascending upon the clouds, a great sadness overcame them; they shed burning tears and exclaimed: O our Master, do not leave us orphans; we are your servants whom you loved so tenderly.”[1]

But there is joy in this day. Christ our Lord has ascended into heaven amid shouts of joy and trumpet blasts. There is joy in this day. Not only are we saved by Christ’s incarnation, not only by his death and resurrection, but also by his ascension. God became Man so that Man might become God. God took on our human nature. He died in His human nature. He rose in His human nature. And now He ascends in His human nature. There is joy in this day. In the Ascension, our human natures go to heaven. It is only in Christ that we are united to God and it is only in Christ’s ascension that our humanity has hope of heaven.

Pope St. Leo the Great writes,

“The blessed Apostles… were so strengthened by the evident truth [of the resurrection] that when their Lord ascended into heaven, far from feeling any sadness, they were filled with great joy. Indeed that blessed company had a great and inexpressible cause for joy when it saw man’s nature rising above the dignity of whole heavenly creation, above the ranks of angels, above the exalted status of the archangels. Nor would there be an limit to its upward course until humanity was admitted to a seat at the right hand of the eternal Father, to be enthroned at last in the glory of Him to whose nature it was wedded in the person of the Son.”[2]

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[1] a sticheron of the Ascension

[2] Synaxarion of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion, edited by Fr. David Kidd and Mother Gabriella Ursache, HDM Press, 1999, p. 214-215.