Thou Art Gone Up on High
In the minds of many, Christmas is the chief festival of the Church’s year, with Easter in second place – but after that? Most would have trouble picking out other days of importance. This impression is understandable, but mistaken, because far from petering out, the trajectory that began on Christmas and continued with Easter is, in the Sundays after Easter, moving towards its consummation in the (sadly neglected) festivals of Ascension, Whitsunday (Pentecost), and Trinity Sunday.
Which is to say, the true meaning of Christmas and Easter only becomes fully apparent in the “week of weeks” that leads us up to Pentecost and its octave celebration on Trinity Sunday. It is in the Lord’s Ascension (May 29th this year) that the true meaning of the Incarnation is fully apparent, not as “the conversion of Godhead into flesh”, but as “the taking up of manhood into God” (the language is that of the Athanasian Creed). Likewise, on Whitsunday (June 8th this year), we see the fruit of his becoming flesh for us, in the pouring out of his Spirit, by whose ministry we may share in the redemption Christ won for us in his flesh. It is in the feast of Trinity Sunday, the octave day of Pentecost (June 15th), that we see why the Spirit has been poured out on believers, precisely so that, as those reborn by the Spirit, they be lifted up see and enter into the Kingdom of heaven, to adore the inexhaustible glory for whose everlasting enjoyment we were made.
As noted, it is understandable that these final feasts of Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday do not have the same immediacy of impact as Christmas and Easter do. For in Christmas, God came to us in the humility of the flesh, in the familiar conditions of our own earthly existence, with the result that in Easter, he might breach the frontier of death (that’s harder, but still connected to the ordinary human experience of earthly existence), but all this is done for the sake of moving far beyond those frontiers into the life of eternal Spirit himself (which completely beyond ordinary earthly experience). Perhaps that’s why we tend to assume that what these feasts celebrate has little to do with us. But that is precisely to miss the most important point of all – that the Son of God became Son of Man (Christmas), and in that humanity suffered, died and rose again (Easter) precisely so that we children of men might become children of God, and share in the life of divine Sonship (Ascension and Pentecost). That’s the mountaintop to which we are climbing steadily these Sundays after Easter, and to turn back now when the peak is within reach is a mistake. For in attaining to this exalted end, we find a new beginning. After earthly “mountain-top experiences,” we return unchanged to our familiar dwellings in the lower worlds, fundamentally. But we ascend with Christ, and are reborn by his Spirit, precisely so that we might make our permanent home among the mountains, as the Sundays after Trinity teach us. (In writing about this, I find myself using the images of the final chapter of Lewis’ Last Battle, and I do not think it is a coincidence.)
In broad strokes, that is our present location in the trajectory of the Church’s year. No doubt it seems rather remote from the quotidian struggle to make a living, maintain relationships, bring up children to live responsible and happy lives, deal with aging, loss, and grief, contain or meet the challenges of disaster, build institutions that serve the common good, and so on. All of these efforts are of immense importance and naturally absorb much of our time, energy, and ingenuity. But they are all utterly in vain, they are all completely futile, if in fact those efforts (even the most successful of them), all finally peter out in darkness. Only if in reality, we are called life in the Spirit, to share in the life of the Son of God, are these efforts not in vain.
That these efforts are not in vain is not a matter we can prove scientifically. If anything, science may suggest that all these efforts are indeed ultimately futile and meaningless, because science has no way to detect ends and purposes. For us to know and believe that all our efforts are not in vain is knowledge that is not accessible to science; though deeply embedded in the natural order, the reality of a purpose and end can only truly be known by revelation – by the coming forth of the Word.
All very high-falutin’ talk, to be sure, and someone may wonder if this exalted language really describes the meaning of his or her earthly life. But if the rain drops beading the flower beneath our feet is beautiful, if the song of the bird lifts our hearts, if we cherish another human being, or find something of satisfaction in the work that has been given to us to do – if beauty, delight, love, and work are real, this is why. “Thou art gone up on high”. Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord”. “Further up and further in”.