At Home, Ascension Sunday

We celebrated the Ascension of Christ to Heaven yesterday, Sunday, May 24, concluding Eastertide, the great yearly celebration of the Resurrection.  Christ walked the earth for those forty days between Easter and Ascension, giving his disciples proof, even the doubting ones.

And with Christ’s resurrection and ascension comes our resurrection and ascension. I thought about this, gazing at the thick Paschal Candle with the five wounds of Christ carved into the wax.  It stood in the chancel, to the left of the altar in our little church of Saint Thomas’.

Saint Thomas’ is of course dedicated to that doubting disciple, the one who had to touch his Lord’s wounds to believe in his resurrection.  Do we need to touch his wounds in order to believe?

For belief in Christ’s bodily resurrection from the grave after his death on Good Friday is crucial, central, to living on this earth.  I’m one of the lucky, fortunate, blessed ones, I suppose.  Belief was easy for me, Lewis’ argument moving from there is a God because there is a moral law, to Christ’s claims to be the Son of God, to the historicity of the Gospel accounts and the behavior of the first Christians.  One cannot deny history, and for me, the evidence was, and is, clear.

So I live each day knowing the hours count.  I live each day knowing my final destination.  I live with God’s presence and I partake of his body and blood, the once doubting Thomas touching wounds with fingers. I too, having been reborn, having been resurrected by belief, am slowly ascending to Heaven, day by day, as I journey through my time on this earth.

Easter to Ascension. A time of great glory.  And thanksgiving.