Psalm-light for Ascension Sunday

psalm 47

“God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.
Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.
For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm.”
(Psalm 47:5-7)

As an increasing number of you know by now, icons are an important part of my spiritual life. For me, when I look upon the icon of the Ascension, my eyes can’t help but be lifted up towards Christ.  Between the Apostles and angels all looking up to Jesus, and the sharp contrast between the order of heaven and the chaos of our world, our eyes, perhaps, feel a sense of calm and right-ness with Jesus, if only for a while. Before long, though, our eyes drift back down to the Apostles below, in their confusion, perhaps foreshadowing the descent of the Holy Spirit not too long from now.

At his birth, God the Son shattered that which divided humanity and God, and the world became saturated with the presence of God in Jesus Christ.  At his crucifixion and burial and resurrection, Jesus Christ shattered the gates of death and made dry and empty the land of the dead. At his ascension, Jesus Christ likewise saturated heaven with his, and our, humanity. His robes which used to be pure white, are now stained pink, a constant reminder that, through his life giving blood, God is eternally clothed with all of humankind, and that, as Members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we, too, are made new; we, too, go home to our God; we, too, are given a new robe of eternal life washed in the blood of the lamb; we, too, are not destroyed but regenerated as the very image and likeness of our Creator, the Eternal and Ever-present God of Love, whose very centre now dwells in each of us until the end of time.

And this is why we “Sing praises to God,” this is why we “Sing praises to our King.” For our King has gone up and yet dwells with and in us. Our Christ, through His ascension, though is enthroned at the right hand of the Father, now has, as the 12th Century “Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers” once put it, His center everywhere, and circumference nowhere.” Amen.

Walking in the Light:
With the weather getting nicer, take some time to stare up at the clouds as they go by.  Notice throughout the week how each is different… some are fluffy and care-free, some blanket the sky with impending rain for the fields, some are nearly invisible allowing for the sun to bathe the earth.  How do you see Christ present and speaking through the clouds? As we wait for Pentecost, in what ways are we called to wait? In what ways is Pentecost already here?

+ Fr. Adam