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The Conqueror’s Triumph
Ascension Day, celebrated by the Western Church on May 14 this year, is the neglected stepchild of the Christian year. Advent has its calendars and its wreaths; Christmas its carols and ivy, its trees and gift exchange; Epiphany its king cakes and magi; Lent its fasts, sobriety, and silence; Palm Sunday its processions with palms; Holy Saturday its vigils and bonfires; Easter its lilies and its fresh clothes. On Pentecost, many dress in Spirit-fire red. Whatever traditions once attended Ascension Day have been abandoned by many churches. This festival often passes without a word, much less a worship service.
That’s a theological tragedy, for without Jesus’s ascension the biblical story lacks closure. Christopher Wordsworth, nephew of the Romantic poet, captured the breadth of Ascension Day in his hymn, “See the Conqueror Mounts in Triumph.” For Wordsworth, the Ascension is King Jesus’s procession into his heavenly palace and accession to his heavenly throne, after he has by death “vanquished sin and Satan” and “spoiled his foes.” Ascending through the thundering “hallelujahs” of myriads of angels, Jesus is Aaron raising his hands in blessing and entering the heavenly sanctuary, Enoch translated to “his everlasting home,” Joshua entering Canaan, Elijah riding his fiery chariot, the Last Adam who raises “our human nature on the clouds to God’s right hand.”
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The Way to the Stars
My earliest recall of this Christian festival is being one of forty pre-pubescent boys who were marched in crocodile file from elementary school to church.
There we were lectured by an Anglican vicar whose stutter did not prevent him from recounting at length the mystery of the Trinity and the bodily ascent of Christ into heaven.
That was in the years of WWII when our childish minds were coping already with understanding modern miracles such as radar and its ability to transmit images of bodies and things by a ping of wireless.
Ten days later followed Pentecost; a festival in which was commemorated the foundation of the Church by the descent of the Holy Spirit to possess the disciples and inspire them to spread the gospel through an enlightened teaching of the new faith illuminated by the multi-linguistic writing of the Acts. To support belief, both events were illustrated by a series of postcards each with a descriptive text taken from the New Testament.
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