CHAPTER I. — The mystery, dearly beloved, of our salvation, which the Creator of the universe valued at the price of His own blood, was fulfilled from the day of His bodily birth even to the end of His passion, through the dispensation of His humility. And although many tokens of Divinity shone forth even in the form of a servant, yet the action of that time pertained properly to the demonstrating of the truth of the manhood He had assumed. But after the passion, the bonds of death being broken — which had displayed its power by advancing upon Him who was ignorant of sin — weakness passed over into power, mortality into eternity, contumely into glory: which the Lord Jesus Christ, in many manifest proofs (Acts...
...1:3) declared to the sight of many, until He should bring into heaven also the triumph of the victory which He had carried off from the dead. As therefore in the paschal solemnity the resurrection of the Lord was to us a cause of rejoicing, so His ascension into the heavens is to us a matter of present joys, as we recall and duly venerate that day whereon the nature of our lowliness in Christ was advanced above all the host of heaven, above all the orders of angels, and beyond the height of all the powers, to the session of God the Father. In which order of divine works we are grounded, we are built up:
...that the grace of God might become more wonderful, when, those things being removed from the sight of men which of right were felt to command reverence to themselves, faith did not misdoubt, hope did not waver, charity did not grow cold. For this is the vigour of great minds, and this the light of truly faithful souls, without hesitation to believe what is not seen with bodily sight, and to fix desire where you cannot direct your gaze. But whence should this piety be born in our hearts, or how should any man be justified through faith, if our salvation consisted only in those things which lie subject to the eyes? Whence also to that man who seemed to doubt concerning the resurrection of Christ, unless in His very flesh the traces of the passion had been explored both by sight and by touch:
Because thou hast seen me, saith the Lord, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed (John 20:29). CHAPTER II. — That therefore we might be capable of this beatitude, dearly beloved, all things being fulfilled which pertained to the evangelical preaching and to the mysteries of the New Testament, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the fortieth day after His resurrection, was raised up into heaven before the disciples (Luke 24:51; Mark 16:19), and put an end to the manner of His bodily presence, to abide at the Father's right hand until the times divinely foreordained for the multiplying of the Church's children be accomplished, and He come in the same flesh in which He ascended to judge the living and the dead. That therefore of our Redeemer which was visible has passed over into the sacraments;
...and that faith might be more excellent and more firm, teaching succeeded to sight, whose authority the hearts of believers, illumined by rays from above, should follow. CHAPTER III. — This faith, increased by the Lord's ascension and strengthened by the gift of the Holy Spirit, neither chains, nor prisons, nor exiles, nor famine, nor fire, nor the mangling of wild beasts, nor the refined torments of the cruelty of persecutors terrified. For this faith throughout the whole world not only men, but even women, and not only beardless boys, but even tender maidens, contended even unto the shedding of their own blood. This faith cast out demons, drove away sicknesses, raised the dead.
Whence even the blessed apostles themselves, who, confirmed by so many miracles and instructed by so many discourses, had nevertheless been terrified by the atrocity of the Lord's passion and had received the truth of His resurrection not without hesitation, profited so much from the Lord's ascension that whatever had before brought them fear was turned into joy. For they had raised the whole contemplation of the mind unto the Godhead of Him who sits at the Father's right hand, and were no longer hindered by the obstacle of bodily vision from directing the keenness of their mind to that which had neither departed from the Father in descending, nor withdrawn from the disciples in ascending. CHAPTER.
IV. — Then therefore, dearly beloved, the Son of man, the Son of God, became more excellently and more sacredly known, when He betook Himself into the glory of the Father's majesty, and in an ineffable manner began to be more present in His Divinity who had become more distant in His humanity. Then to the Son equal with the Father a more learned faith began, by the step of the mind, to draw near, and to have no need of handling the corporeal substance in Christ, whereby He is less than the Father (John 14:28): since, the nature of the glorified body remaining, the faith of believers was called thither where the Only-begotten, equal to the Begetter, should be touched not by a fleshly hand, but by spiritual understanding.
Hence is that which, after His resurrection, the Lord, when Mary Magdalene, bearing the person of the Church, hastened to draw near to touch Him, says to her: Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father (John 20:17): that is, I would not that thou come to me bodily, nor that thou know me by the sense of the flesh; to loftier things I defer thee, greater things I prepare for thee. When I shall have ascended to my Father, then more perfectly and more truly shalt thou handle me, laying hold of what thou dost not touch, and believing what thou dost not behold. But when the eager eyes of the disciples were gazing up with intent wonder upon the Lord ascending into the heavens, there stood by them two angels shining in wondrous whiteness of raiment, who also said:
Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven? This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, as you have seen him going into heaven (Acts 1:11). By which words all the children of the Church were taught that Jesus Christ was to be believed to come visibly, in that same flesh in which He had ascended; nor could it be doubted that all things are subject to Him, whom the angelic service had waited upon from the very beginning of His corporeal nativity. For as the angel announced to the blessed Virgin that Christ was to be conceived of the Holy Spirit, so also, when brought forth of the Virgin, the voice of the heavenly ones sang it to the shepherds:
...as the first testimonies of the messengers from on high taught that He had risen from the dead, so the offices of the angels proclaimed that He would come in that same flesh to judge the world: that we might understand how great powers shall be present with Him when He comes to judge, to whom so great ones ministered even while judging was still to come. CHAPTER V. — Let us therefore exult, dearly beloved, with spiritual joy, and rejoicing with thanksgiving worthy before God, let us raise the free eyes of the heart to that height where Christ is. Let not earthly desires weigh down souls called upward; let not perishable things occupy those foreordained to things eternal; let not deceitful allurements retard those who have entered upon the way of truth;
...and so let these temporal things be traversed by the faithful, that they may know themselves to be but sojourning in this vale of the world, in which, even if certain conveniences flatter them, they are not to be wickedly embraced, but bravely passed through. For unto this devotion the most blessed apostle Peter incites us; and, according to that love which he conceived by the threefold profession of the Lord's love for the feeding of Christ's sheep (John 21:17), beseeching, he says: Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to refrain yourselves from carnal desires which war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11).
But for whom, save for the devil, do carnal pleasures do battle, who rejoices to bind souls tending toward things above with the delights of corruptible goods, and to lead them away from those seats from which he himself fell? Against whose snares every faithful one ought wisely to keep watch, that he may be able to dash down his enemy from that very thing whereby he is tempted. But nothing, dearly beloved, is more effective against the devil's wiles than the kindness of mercy and the bounty of charity, through which every sin is either turned aside or overcome. But the loftiness of this virtue is not attained before that which is opposed to it be overthrown. And what is so hostile to mercy and to the works of charity as avarice, from whose root the shoot of all evils springs up?
Which, unless it be killed off in its very kindlings, it must needs be that in the field of that heart in which the plant of this evil has grown strong, thorns rather and briers of vices, than any seed of true virtue, should spring up. Let us resist, therefore, dearly beloved, this so pestilent an evil, and let us follow after charity, without which no virtue can shine (1 Corinthians 13): that through this way of love, by which Christ came down to us, we too may be able to ascend to Him, to whom, with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, is honour and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.