COMMEMORATION Blessed art Thou, O Lord who didst bring forth of water moving creatures that have life, and whales, and winged fowls: and didst bless them, so as to increase and multiply. The things concerning the Ascension: Set up Thyself, O God, above the heavens and Thy glory above all the earth. By thine Ascension draw us withal unto Thee, O Lord, so as to set our affections on things above, and not on things on the earth. By the awful mystery of Thy Holy Body and Precious Blood in the evening of this day: Lord, have mercy.
As to those other things which we hold on the authority, not of Scripture, but of tradition, and which are observed throughout the whole world, it may be understood that they are held as approved and instituted either by the apostles themselves, or by plenary Councils, whose authority in the Church is most useful, e. g. the annual commemoration, by special solemnities, of the Lord's passion, resurrection, and ascension, and of the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven, and whatever else is in like manner observed by the whole Church wherever it has been established.
That world beyond is a world of sanctity and radiance; therefore, it is necessary that in this world he should acquire these divine attributes. In that world there is need of spirituality, faith, assurance, the knowledge and love of God. These he must attain in this world so that after his ascension from the earthly to the heavenly Kingdom he shall find all that is needful in that eternal life ready for him.
The Ascension is actually the birth of the Inner You expressed as the spiritual individualism of the inner particle state.
Angels and Airwaves shows are like an ascension to Heaven.
Death is an ascension to a better library.
Our life is what we make it. An insignificant game or a noble trial; a dream or a reality; a play of the senses worn out in selfish use, and flying "swifter than a weaver's shuttle," or an ascension of the soul, by daily duties and unfaltering faith, to more spiritual relations and to loftier toils.
Presumably what happened to Jesus was what happens to all of us when we die. We decompose. Accounts of Jesus's resurrection and ascension are about as well-documented as Jack and the Beanstalk.
Aging is a staircase - the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards.
Jesus' epic work through his sinless life, atoning death, resurrection, and ascension, and the sending of the Spirit, was so that God could have an ethnically diverse family of Jews and Gentiles.
Show me thy feet, show me thy legs, thy thighs Show me those fleshy principalities; Show me that hill where smiling love doth sit, Having a living fountain under it; Show me thy waist, then let me there withal, By the ascension of thy lawn, see all.
Can you imagine if everyone on the planet turned off their TV to stop the intake of fear from the news channels and just concentrated on love? The whole planet would instantly propel itself into the ascension process and turn into a heavenly state in a higher vibratory dimension!
At its very core the story of Easter has nothing to do with angelic announcements or empty tombs. It has nothing to do with time periods, whether three days, forty days, or fifty days. It has nothing to do with resuscitated bodies that appear and disappear or that finally exit this world in a heavenly ascension.
