Homily on the Ascension of Christ

1Blessed be God. As a head is to the body, so a feast is to the order of feasts; and today is that feast. For we celebrate the Ascension of Christ in the flesh, as the fullness shown of the Lordly feasts. Just as a head is beautiful, so today's feast of divine grace radiates beauty; but many, not knowing its greatness, think it is less.

If you wish to learn, lend me your mind with forbearance. Cooperate with me only through prayers, I entreat you; and silence the leaden winds, and calm the waves of chatter, and grant me leisure for hearing. For according to wise Solomon, the words of the wise are heard in rest.

First, then, is the terrible and wonderful feast: the birth of Christ according to the flesh. For how is the descent of God from heaven to us not wonderful, but rather a co-descent? Because the Master of all condescended to unite himself to the form of a servant, and the one encompassing all has a poor mother.

Second is the feast of the Theophanies, having a much greater contemplation than the first. For in the first feast, a star showed the God-Logos having been born; but in the second feast, John cried, 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.' And the Father, crying from heaven, confirmed the testimony of the one being baptized: 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' But even then, the full enjoyment of sobriety was not reached, since the mortal body had not yet received immortality through the resurrection.

Third is the feast of the saving passion: the resurrection, which gives life to those who, through his blood, are being struck like sparks, and are being reborn through water and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, he raised a fallen world, and enabled the formerly fallen Adam to reach eternal life. Through a tree Adam tasted death; through the tree of the cross, life is granted to the world. And this feast was shown more glorious than the preceding feasts, because in it, death, through death, having killed death, brought immortal life to those dying. But even this did not have the fullness of joy, holding the risen one upon the earth.

But the great and surpassing joy of Pentecost, in which the Holy Spirit was given to the apostles, is today, in the day of the Ascension, filled with joy through all things. Having opened the moon-bearing heavens, and having ascended the most fine air, and having rounded from the earth to the heavenly grips, and having incited all the natures of the angels to unutterable joy, he showed us a strange sight: our flesh having been placed upon a royal throne. Where are those busy with the chariot races, and the drivers loving sharpness? Come, see a paradoxical chariot race: the Creator of creation in human...

2Holding a chariot, not running disorderly upon the earth, but ascending in a new way through ethereal paths, it approaches to seize the heavenly turning-point and powerfully repels the running Belial. But the children of the Jews, the instigators of error, having heard that Christ had been taken up into heaven, desiring to obscure the paradoxical wonder of the Sun of Righteousness, introduce Elijah, saying: 'Why do you boast so much, Christians, that Christ was taken up, as you say? For even Elijah, being a man, having been worthy of similar glory, was taken up into heaven.'

To these we speak with boldness: Why, O Jews, do you plunder the books like blind men, and do not see what is written in them with precision? Why do you read and do not recognize? For what does the Divine Scripture say? That Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind as if into heaven; but the phrase 'as if into heaven' has an ambiguous meaning; but 'into heaven' shows the truth clearly. And since neither Elijah nor anyone else ascended into heaven, except only the Only-begotten Son of God who descended from heaven, who himself informs all about himself, he says: 'No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven; the good shepherd, who having left the ninety-nine sheep of the angels upon the heavenly mountains, and having found the strayed sheep, and carrying them on the shoulders of philanthropy, and having brought them into the heavenly harbor, offering them as a gift to his own Begetter, says: I have found, Father, the strayed sheep, which the deceiving serpent deceived with crafty tricks, and showed the paths of evil, and polluted the purity of the knowledge of God with the mud of many-mindedness. Having seen it thus suffocating in the mire of life, I quickly lifted it up with the right hand of my divinity; and with the bowels of mercies I washed it in the streams of the Jordan, and having perfumed it with the fragrance of my Holy Spirit, I have now come through the resurrection, presenting to you the rational sheep as a guest worthy of your divinity.'

Today the devil is overcome in his own defeat, seeing our body being led up into the heavens; today sin is dissipated like smoke through the ascension of Christ Jesus; today the devil wails, saying: 'What shall I do, the wretched one? Having snatched all those from eternity like a sharp-beaked hawk from me, he has left me desolate, and having clipped my wings from every side, he has cast me down to the earth.' I have been deceived by the one of Mary...

3Son. I did not know that God is hidden in a human body. I saw him as a human body surrounding him, and thinking him merely a man, I incited the Jews against him; and what I did not dare to do through myself, I accomplished through the Jews. I found an abundance of slander; I conceived every kind of insolence against him; I made him drink with a reed and a sponge; I crowned his head with thorns; I dishonored him with beatings, and I fastened him to a cross with nails. Having brought him to an end by death, as if he were conquered, I celebrated with the Jews. But when I saw that on the third day he is raised, just as I had said, I fell down like a sword piercing through the heart. And seeing that he eats and drinks, I saw them preparing another cross again. But as I was remembering these things to myself, I see him ascending into heaven with glory, from which I fell down in shame.

Therefore also the Psalmist cried out from many of the years, saying: All the nations, clap your hands; shout to God with a voice of joy, because the Lord is most high, a fearsome king, great over all the earth; and again: God has ascended in a shout, the Lord in the voice of a trumpet. I want to pursue him, but like lead I am brought down; I want to seize him, but invisibly I struggle. What shall the wretched man do? From every side he has surrounded me. From the heavens he hurled me like a very small stone down to the earth. Having fallen to the earth, I desired to hide in the waters; but finding me hiding in the streams of the Jordan, he seized me and struck me. I want even to seize the earth, and all, as guardians of a lordly law, cry out the voice against me: The earth is the Lord's and its fullness, the inhabited world and all who dwell in it. The earthquake showed that the earth is the Lord's. For the earth, not bearing the name of the Lord, was boiling with an unyielding trembling, being scourged because of the disorder of its children; just as a mouth having opened cracks against the elements, the magnitude of the hidden pain cried out, and it pleaded to spare those who had sinned, like a mother for her children. Who will speak the powers of the Lord? Will he make all his praises heard? The earth is the Lord's and its fullness. For Christ joined himself to the flesh made from the earth, and sat in the heavens.

The devil comes wanting to infect through fornication. But as one having the eye of the soul as a sleepless guard, do not allow the thief to rupture the eye of the mind, so that, bleeding, you might say to him: A traitor of a lordly possession...

4I am defeated, devil. For the earth belongs to the Lord, and the Church of Christ is always being cultivated by the heavenly rain, ever-flourishing and bearing fruit for Christ, thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.

The sower, he says, went out to sow; and one fell upon the path, that Greek deception. Then the flying things came, the sharp-eyed snatchers of demons, and they devoured it. Another fell upon the rocky places—the hard-hearted choice of the Jews, I say—and immediately there sprouted a plant of presumption and lawlessness. Such is the way of the Jews. For while legislating in the wilderness, they said to Moses, 'All that God has said, we will do and we will listen.' Yet they, promising these things, worship an unspiritual calf and preferred the dead to the living God. Another fell upon the thorns, those rough-centered and blasphemous-tongued heresies which daily choke the seed of piety.

Another fell upon the good earth, the Church of Christ, the fruitful, bearing thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. Thirty is the yoke of prudence; sixty is of angel-like virginity; a hundred is of divine justice, of purity, and of the manliness of the martyrs. For the preachers of piety, evangelizing to all the coming of the Lord at the end, were saying, 'In this manner he will come, the way in which you saw him being taken up.' For two men appeared in white clothing. Two, so that the truth might be believed; men, so that I might support the disciples into manliness; wearing white, so that they might brighten the minds of those hearing.

What then were those seen preaching? Men of Israel, why do you stand looking into the heaven? Why do you gaze into the heaven? Rather, considering the maker of heaven, you glorified the greatness of the one being taken up, and you marveled at his condescension of philanthropy, because having united to himself a man of the earth, he promoted him to a citizen of heaven and made him an inhabitant of heaven; marvel! Where did he lift up the one lying below? Why do you stand looking into the heaven? In this way he will come. How? Surrounding our own body, presenting the side pierced by the spear, so that the Jews might see the one they pierced; and we might be worthy to see his face with boldness, and we might obtain the promised good things, by the grace and philanthropy of our Lord Jesus Christ; with whom to the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory, power, and honor, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.