The Ascension (Notes)

Acts of the Apostles - Chapter 1

The Ascension from the Mount of Olives. J-J Tissot 

[8] sed accipietis virtutem supervenientis Spiritus Sancti in vos, et eritis mihi testes in Jerusalem, et in omni Judaea, et Samaria, et usque ad ultimum terrae.
But you shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth.

[9] Et cum haec dixisset, videntibus illis, elevatus est : et nubes suscepit eum ab oculis eorum.
And when he had said these things, while they looked on, he was raised up: and a cloud received him out of their sight.

This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven. J-J Tissot

[10] Cumque intuerentur in caelum euntem illum, ecce duo viri astiterunt juxta illos in vestibus albis,
And while they were beholding him going up to heaven, behold two men stood by them in white garments.

[11] qui et dixerunt : Viri Galilaei, quid statis aspicientes in caelum? Hic Jesus, qui assumptus est a vobis in caelum, sic veniet quemadmodum vidistis eum euntem in caelum.
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.

[12] Tunc reversi sunt Jerosolymam a monte qui vocatur Oliveti, qui est juxta Jerusalem, sabbati habens iter.
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount that is called Olivet, which is nigh Jerusalem, within a sabbath day's journey.

From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)

The Resurrection of Jesus is to a certain extent incomplete so long as His glorious Ascension is still an accomplished.  He has resumed His body, He has still to take His own place again, and that He is about to do.  After He had given His last instructions to His disciples, Saint Luke tells us that "He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and bless them.  And it came to pass, while He placed them He was parted from them and carried up to Heaven." The same disciple, in the Acts of the Apostles, adds a few characteristic details about the luminous cloud and the angels which appeared.  It is evident that the cloud did not resemble a chariot destined to bear the glorified body of Jesus to Heaven, but was simply a veil hiding from the disciples what became of that body, endowed as it now was with special powers.  It may perhaps have undergone a kind of dematerialization, fading away in the light, to take form again where He was to reign eternally.  Or perhaps he may have been merely transported to Heaven in the twinkling of an eye, by virtue of His divinity.  However that may have been, He suddenly faded from sight, and where He had been, a cloud stretched like a veil, hiding the mysteries of God.  The apotheosis is complete.  Jesus is gone to sit down at the right hand of His father, from whence He shall some day come, according to His promise, to judge the world.
The Ascension is not merely the personal glorification of Jesus, it is also an event of the last importance to the human race.  It is the completion of the Creation, interrupted by the fall of the first man.  The design of God in creating man was to make of him the conscious and free agent of his own salvation, the sharer in the divine bliss and glory.  Man by his sin had hindered the realisation of this plan, but he could not frustrate it.  By the Resurrection of Christ we see man set free from death and restored to his first hopes of eternal life, but his salvation is not yet completed.  By the Ascension God permits man, redeemed through Christ, to share with Him in the divine Glory, and thus realises in Him the original idea of the Creation.  Only thus can that idea achieve the completion.
Not yet, however, is the end of all things.  The Ascension not only completes the works of our redemption through Christ, it lays the foundations of its realisation in every one of us who is of Christ.  In this consists its importance for the Church.  There remain over two promises to be fulfilled; the sending of the Holy Spirit, which shall continuously supply the church on earth with the grace of the risen Savior, and that last prophecy uttered in the Judgment Hall of Caiaphas: "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven", a coming which will summon the elect to share the Ascension of the Master and to become partakers of His Glory, even as Jesus prayed in the sublime petition offered up on the eve of His death.  "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my Glory which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world".  It is not for us to dwell now on this last subject, these final chords of the divine symphony.  We have been relating the life on earth of Jesus, that life ends for us in the apotheosis of the Ascension.  The cloud which "received Christ from sight" is like the curtain which falls at the close of a drama.  We will not attempt to raise it, but let us each and all withdrawal to "ponder", as the Virgin did, these things in our hearts.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam