the Basis of the celebration was the event of the ascension of Christ to heaven forty days after His Resurrection from the dead. This all happened in may 30 years of the I century BC on the mount of olives, East of Jerusalem. But what we care about what happened two thousand years ago? As it concerns us?
the gospel reports: forty days after His Resurrection Christ appeared to his disciples, conversing with them, strengthening their faith in an extraordinary event, event, exceeding human experience, – in His Resurrection from the dead in victory over death. And on the fortieth day after Easter Jesus gathered the apostles, led them to the mount of olives and ascended into heaven.
Before the event of the ascension is an important dialogue that the Savior says about the coming Kingdom of God, that after a few days the Spirit of God come upon them, His followers, and they will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. But the disciples of Christ, is still hoping that the Kingdom of God is the triumph of some political system, to ask of Christ: “Not at this time, Lord, You rebuild the Kingdom to Israel?” Christ sternly replied: “Not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power,” and this is the answer to all of us, people constantly guessing, and not in the next month the world will end?
After these remarkable words Christ promises the disciples that they will receive power when come upon them the Holy Spirit, says that through the Holy spirit, the apostles begin his sermon. “Having said this, He got up before them, and a cloud received Him out of their sight” – we read from Luke.
the Feast of the ascension we loved: the ringing of bells, the freedom of the day, the joy of the people… In such a festive day in 1799-m Pushkin was born – that year the holiday fell on June 6. Isn’t it a miracle? The poet, exalted the Russian language and literature to heights unattainable; a genius whose whole life climbing over his man: heredity, upbringing, social frameworks, temperament, character, environment, in the end, fate was born exactly on the Ascension. In the General rejoicing of the people and the ringing of bells! The Miracle Of God. Pushkin stressed this holiday, loved the icon “Ascension”, and wedding chose the Church of the Great Ascension at Nikitsky gates in Moscow.
But the Ascension of Jesus Christ is not just an event that took place two thousand years ago. Not just a historical episode, inspiring painters and artists. The ascension of Christ applies to everyone. Not only all of the human race, more broadly, the Ascension has affected the whole created world! Saint Ephraim the Syrian says: “Tresviso, man, pull yourself together and, as reasonable, know that you came from the sky God to the earth to take you to heaven”. What is the matter?
Before Christianity existed two approaches to human t��Lou. The first recognized the value of the body, and as a source of pleasure. Second, considering the body is guilty of impurity, vices, saw the flesh as a prison of the soul. And suddenly God is born in the human race, takes on human flesh. Which meant that God became man? “This means, – says Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, that in this incarnation of the man shown to us in all its wondrous and unfathomable capacity: it can become a vessel for the divine, he can be a temple, a place of indwelling of the Holy spirit… the Flesh of man, Jesus lovingly accepted from the virgin Mary, the flesh, which He gave to court torture and death on the cross, – that the flesh of Christ does not leave on earth after His godfather dying… He is resurrected, alive in the flesh, resurrected with ulcers on the hands and feet, the wound in his side, resurrected to witness that the human body is designed to decay, is not to die, and called to eternal, undying, triumphant life. In His Ascension our human body, our human nature raises It to the Sky.” The Apostle Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians we read: “know ye Not that your body is the temple of the living in you the Holy spirit, Whom you have from God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” That is, neither of which neglect the body is no question! On the contrary, the Apostle Paul requires not just careful but reverent attitude to the body as a Shrine. Christianity is not fighting against the body, only against sin. As says St. Callistus, we’re not telembici, but Gregoriy. Therefore, mindful of the importance of repentance, of prayer, of communion, have much to store and the body God gave us a precious gift: to store health, bodily cleanliness. And thoughtless negligence about security in periods of epidemics, a crime against others, against yourself.
But this is only one facet of the feast of the ascension. As noted by Saint Gregory Palamas, Ascension belongs to all people because all will be resurrected on the day of the Second coming of Christ. Date of the Second coming, as we remember from the beginning of the article, unknown to us, but we know who will be raptured, “caught up into the clouds” – those who “crucify your sin through repentance and residence of the gospel”, and raise the person is not a disembodied spirit, and body, though not our earth, but all the same body in heaven. The Holy Martyr Hippolytus teaches that “the body will rise not, what is now, but clean and not subject to damage. Every body will return its soul.”
the human nature of the Ascension of Christ, understood, but what’s up with all the created world – animals, birds, with the plant Kingdom?
the Body, in which were embodied the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the body in which He walked the earth, which He heard in��Affairs, the body which He gave on torture and death – this body consists of all the things, what is our visible world, teaches Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. “In this body is concentrated the substance of heaven and earth, from the simple to the incomprehensible, all matter, are United with the deity. And when Christ ascends to heaven, He elevates not only of humanity, He elevates the entire visible creature into the depths of divine mysteries. And this world is no longer separated from Him.”
Listen, look! Perhaps in the morning the chirping birds, may the sun do not feel the presence of God’s Love in our world? In the churches, ascension day, repeat the words of the Lord vestervalli in our world: “I am with you and no one will prevail against you!”
