Quote/s of the Day – 26 May – The Ascension of Our Lord
“My sheep follow me,” says Christ. By a certain God-given grace, believers follow in the footsteps of Christ. No longer subject to the shadows of the Law , they obey the commands of Christ, and guided by His words, rise through grace, to His own dignity, for they are called children of God. When Christ ascends into heaven, they also follow Him.”
St Cyril of Alexandria (376-444) Father and Doctor of the Church
“Why do we on earth, not strive to find rest with Him in Heaven, even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to Him? While in heaven. He is also with us and we, while on earth, are with Him. He is here with us by His Divinity, His power and His love. We cannot be in Heaven, as He is on earth, by divinity but in Him, we can be there by love!”
St Augustine (354-430) Father and Doctor of the Church
Our Hearts are Filled with Joy Today The Benedictines of Saint Cecilia’s Abbey, Ryde, UK
Greeting the dawn of this great feast Our hearts are filled with joy today, When we recall how Christ our God Ascended to His realms of light.
Winner forever in the strife Against the prince of death and sin, Glory of all creation’s hope, Before the Father’s face He stands.
Brightest of clouds hid Him from sight, But pledge remained of life to come, Since Paradise can now be ours Which our first parents lost by sin.
Greatest of joys mankind can claim, That He whom holy Mary bore, Reigns at His Father’s side in pow’r, His Cross and bitter Passion past.
Saving Avenger of our race, To Him our grateful hearts we raise; In His immortal deity Our mortal nature dwells on high.
We have a lasting cause for joy, Which all the saints and angels share; Theirs is the bliss of seeing Him, And we still know that He is near.
Jesus, in splendour bright enthroned, Keep all our hearts at rest in You, Sending Your Spirit down to us, To teach the Father’s love for all. Amen
One Minute Reflection – 26 May – The Ascension of Our Lord – Acts 1:1-11, Mark 16:14-20
“And the Lord Jesus, after He spoke to them, was taken up into Heaven and took His seat at the Right Hand of God.” – Mark 16:19
REFLECTION – “And so, while at Easter it was the Lord’s Resurrection which was the cause of our joy, our present rejoicing is due to His Ascension into Heaven. With all due solemnity, we are commemorating that day on which our poor human nature was carried up in Christ, above all the Hosts of Heaven, above all the ranks of Angels, beyond those Heavenly Powers, to the very throne of God the Father.
It is upon this ordered structure of divine acts, that we have been firmly established, so that the grace of God may show itself still more marvelous when, in spite of the withdrawal from our sight of everything that is rightly felt to command our reverence, faith does not fail, hope is not shaken, charity does not grow cold. It was in order that we might be capable of such blessedness, that on the fortieth day after His Resurrection, after He had made careful provision for everything concerning the preaching of the Gospel and the Mysteries of the New Covenant, our Lord Jesus Christ was taken up to Heaven before the eyes of His Disciples and so, His Bodily Presence among them, came to an end.
From that time onward, He was to remain at the Father’s Right Hand, until the completion of the period, ordained by God, for the Church’s children to increase and multiply, after which, in the same Body with which He ascended, He will come again to judge the living and the dead. And so, our Redeemer’s Visible Presence has passed into the Sacraments. Our faith is nobler and stronger because, empirical sight has been replaced by a reliable teaching, whose authority is accepted by believing hearts, enlightened from on high.” – St Leo the Great (400-461) Pope , Great Father and Doctor of the Church (Sermon 74).
PRAYER – Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that as we do believe Thine Only-Begotten Son, our Saviour to have this day ascended into the heavens, so we may also in heart and mind, ascend and with Him continually dwell. Through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son our Lord, Who lives and reigns with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen (Collect).
The ASCENSION of OUR LORD – 26 May By Abbot Prosper Guéranger (1805-1875) Excerpt
The Sun of the fortieth day has risen in all His splendour! The earth, which shook with gladness at the Birth of our Emmanuel (Ps. xcv. xcvi. xcvii.), now thrills with a strange emotion. The Divine series of the Mysteries of the Man-God is about to close. Heaven has caught up the joy of earth. The Angelic Choirs are preparing to receive their promised King and their Princes stand at the Gates, that they may open them when the signal is given of the mighty Conqueror’s approach (Ibid. xxiii. 7). The holy souls, that were liberated from Limbo on the morning of the Resurrection, are hovering round Jerusalem, waiting for the happy moment when Heaven’s gate, closed by Adam’s sin, shall be thrown open and they shall enter, in company with their Redeemer: a few hours more and then to Heaven! Meanwhile, our Risen Jesus has to visit His Disciples and bid them farewell, for they are to be left, for some years longer, in this vale of tears.
They are in the Cenacle, impatiently awaiting His coming. Suddenly He appears in their midst. Of the Mother’s joy, who would dare to speak? As to the Disciples and the holy Women, they fall down and affectionately adore the Master, Who has come to take His leave of them. He deigns to sit down to table with them, He even condescends to eat with them, not, indeed, to give them proof of His Resurrection, for He knows that they have no further doubts of the Mystery but now that He is about to sit at the Right Hand of the Father, He would give them this endearing mark of familiarity. O admirable repast! in which Mary, for the last time in this world, is seated side by side with her Jesus and in which the Church, (represented by the Disciples and the holy Women,) is honoured by the visible presidency of her Head and Spouse. …
Then assuming a tone of authority, such as none but a God could take, He says to them: Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved but he that believeth not, shall be condemned (Ibid. xvi. 15, 16). And how shall they accomplish this mission of preaching the Gospel to the whole world? how shall they persuade men to believe their word? By Miracles. And these signs, continues Jesus, shall follow them that believe – in My Name, they shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents;,and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay their hands upon the sick and they shall recover (St. Mark, svi. 17, 18). He would have Miracles to be the foundation of His Church, just as He had made them the argument of His own Divine Mission. The suspension of the laws of nature proves to us that it is God Who speaks, we must receive the word and humbly believe it. …
But the hour of separation is come. Jesus rises: His blessed Mother and the hundred and twenty persons assembled there, prepare to follow Him. The Cenacle is situated on Mount Sion, which is one of the two hills within the walls of Jerusalem. The holy group traverses the City, making for the eastern Gate, which opens on the Valley of Josaphat. It is the last time that Jesus walks through the faithless City. He is invisible to the eyes of the people who denied Him but visible to His Disciples and goes before them, as, heretofore, the pillar of fire led on the Israelites. How beautiful and imposing a sight! Mary, the Disciples and the holy Women, accompanying Jesus in His Heaven-ward journey, which is to lead Him to the Right Hand of His Eternal Father! It was commemorated in the Middle-Ages by a solemn Procession before the Mass of Ascension Day. What happy times were those, when Christians took delight in honouring every action of our Redeemer! They could not be satisfied, as we are, with a few vague notions, which can produce nothing but an equally vague devotion! …
According to a tradition, which has been handed down from the earliest ages of Christianity (Constit. Apost., lib. v. cap. xix), it is mid-day, the same hour that He had been raised up, when nailed to His Cross. Giving His Blessed Mother a look of filial affection and another of fond farewell to the rest of the group, who stand around Him, Jesus raises up His Hands and blesses them all. Whilst thus blessing them, He is raised up from the ground whereon He stands and ascends into Heaven (St. Luke, xxiv. 51). Their eyes follow Him, until a cloud comes and receives Him out of their sight (Acts, i. 9).
Yes, Jesus is gone! The earth has lost her Emmanuel! … During the Forty days He has deigned to spend with us, since His Resurrection, our faith has made us cling to Him: we would fain have kept Him with us forever but the hour is come, He has left us; yes, our dearest Jesus is gone! O happy the souls that He had taken from Limbo! they have gone with Him and, for all eternity, are to enjoy the heaven of His visible presence.
The Disciples are still steadfastly looking up towards Heaven, when lo! two Angels, clad in white robes, appear to them, saying: Ye men of Galilee! why stand ye looking up to heaven? This Jesus, Who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as ye have seen Him going into heaven (Acts, i. 10, 11)! He has ascended, a Saviour; He is to return, as Judge; between these two events is comprised the whole life of the Church on earth. We are, therefore, living under the reign of Jesus as our Saviour, for He has said: God sent not His Son into the world to Judge the world, but that the world might be Saved by Him (St. Joh, iii. 17) and to carry out this merciful design, He has just been giving to His Disciples, the mission to go throughout the whole world and invite men, whilst yet there is time, to accept the mystery of Salvation! … The Angels said to the Apostles: This Jesus shall come, as ye have seen Him going into heaven: happy we, if, during His absence, we shall have so unreservedly loved and served Him, as to be able to meet Him, with confidence, when He comes to judge us!
Nostra Signora di Caravaggio / Our Lady of Caravaggio, Lombardy, Italy (1432) – 26 May:
Title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary who appeared in an apparition on 26 May 1432 in the countryside outside Caravaggio, Lombardy, Italy. Giannetta de’ Vacchi Varoli was cutting hay in a field when the Virgin appeared. Mary requested penance from and a chapel built by the locals. A new spring of healing water appeared in the hay field. The apparition anniversary became a day of pilgrimage to the Shrine of Santa Maria del Fonte built at the site and devotion to the Madonna of Caravaggio spread through the region and eventually around the world. In 1879, Italians from Lombardy built a chapel for their settlement in southern Brazil. As it was the only sacred art that any of them possessed, they dedicated the Chapel to the Madonna di Caravaggio. Today the shrine hosts over a million pilgrims annually. Patronage – Diocese of Cremona, Italy.
St Alphaeus St Anderea Kaggwa Bl Andrea Franchi St Becan of Cork Bl Berengar of Saint-Papoul St Damian the Missionary St Desiderius of Vienne St Pope Eleuterus St Felicissimus of Todi St Fugatius the Missionary St Gioan Ðoàn Trinh Hoan St Guinizo of Monte Cassino St Heraclius of Todi Bl Lambert Péloguin of Vence
St Odulvald of Melrose St Paulinus of Todi St Peter Sanz St Ponsiano Ngondwe St Priscus of Auxerre and Companions St Quadratus of Africa St Quadratus the Apologist St Regintrudis of Nonnberg St Simitrius of Rome and Companions St Zachary of Vienne
Thought for the Day – 15 October – Meditations with Antonio Cardinal Bacci (1881-1971)
“Month of the Holy Rosary” The Second Glorious Mystery The Ascension of Jesus into Heaven
“In the course of our ascent, we must never stop and decide that we have gone far enough! To stop would inevitably mean going backward. Jesus and Mary are inviting and encouraging us to go higher and higher.
Have we been purified of sin, the defiler of the soul and the destroyer of human dignity? Have we an intense horror, even of venial sin, which separates us from God and kills the life of grace? It is still not enough – we must go higher.
Are we generous and unselfish in the fight to achieve holiness, guarding ourselves against the evil suggestions of the world, the flesh and the devil? It is still not enough – we must continue to advance.
Do we carry the daily cross which God has entrusted to us and accept the burden with perfect resignation to His Holy Will? Very good but even this is not enough!”
Thought for the Day – 13 May – “Mary’s Month” – Meditations with Antonio Cardinal Bacci (1881-1971)
The Ascension of Jesus
“When we meditate on the Ascension, we should humbly ask God, to give us the grace, to strip ourselves of our sins and defects. Then we shall be able to fly towards Him with love and hope in this life and, when our soul has been set free from the body which imprisons it on earth, we shall be able to set out on our last joyful flight into His presence. These are the reflections which should be in our minds around the feast of the Ascension. These are the desires which we should foster and the resolutions which we should form. Let us ask Our Lord, to bless them.
O Mary, my most holy Mother, implore your divine Son Jesus, now ascended into Heaven, that I may be more detached from the useless and passing goods of this earth. Ask Him to purify my soul from every stain of sin and to strengthen my will, in it’s good resolutions. Ask Him that my heart may rise nearer to God and to you, through it’s desire for perfection. Amen.”
Thought for the Day – 14 October – Meditations with Antonio Cardinal Bacci (1881-1971)
“Month of the Holy Rosary” The Second Glorious Mystery The Ascension of Jesus into Heaven
“Forty days after His glorious resurrection, Jesus came, with all His friends, among them His Mother, to the Mount of Olives. This area had already witnessed the opening phase of His passion, which was all the more poignant, perhaps because in Gethsemane, it was not only His body which was lacerated by scourges and nails but, His soul, which experienced the agonising vision of the sins and ingratitude of the human race. Now, however, He is here with a glorified body as the Conqueror of sin and of death. He looks for the last time on His small band of followers, to whom He has entrusted His mission of transforming the entire universe by preaching and putting into practice, the Gospel message, throughout the world. Now, He promises them the Holy Spirit, Who will give them the power to overcome evil. Then He is lifted up toward Heaven, until a bright cloud hides Him from their sight.
Perhaps, the Blessed Mother, was the last to take her eyes off the disappearing cloud which had removed Jesus from view. Her human eyes never saw again the beloved figure of her divine Son but, in her soul, she saw Him entering triumphantly into Heaven among choirs of Angels and sitting at the right hand of the Eternal Father. She saw and thought with infinite yearnng of the not too distant day, when she would have passed from mortal exile, into the everlasting happiness of Heaven, where she would embrace her divine Son again in an ecstasy of love.
We have all been called to ascend to Heaven with Jesus and Mary. Let us remember, however, that only the innocent and the repentant can be admitted into Paradise. If we have been unfortunate enough to have lost our baptismal innocence, only the second way is left to us – the way of penance. We must purify ourselves of our sins by means of good works. We must ascend higher and highter, towards the summit of Christian perfection.”
Thought for the Day – 30 May – “Mary’s Month” – Meditations with Antonio Cardinal Bacci (1881-1971)
The Ascension of Jesus
“When we meditate on the Ascension, we should humbly ask God, to give us the grace, to strip ourselves of our sins and defects. Then we shall be able to fly towards Him with love and hope in this life and, when our soul has been set free from the body which imprisons it on earth, we shall be able to set out on our last joyful flight into His presence. These are the reflections which should be in our minds around the feast of the Ascension. These are the desires which we should foster and the resolutions which we should form. Let us ask Our Lord, to bless them.
O Mary, my most holy Mother, implore your divine Son Jesus, now ascended into Heaven, that I may be more detached from the useless and passing goods of this earth. Ask Him to purify my soul from every stain of sin and to strengthen my will, in it’s good resolutions. Ask Him that my heart may rise nearer to God and to you, through it’s desire for perfection. Amen.”
13 May – The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
We, the members of Christ’s body, ascended to heaven with the Lord, through love…. a Sermon by St Augustine(354-430)- Father and Doctor of Grace , delivered on the Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord
Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with Him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For just as he remained with us even after His ascension, so we too are already in heaven with Him, even though what is promised us, has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.
Christ is now exalted above the heavens but He still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of His body, have to bear. He showed this when He cried out from above: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? and when He said: I was hungry and you gave me food.
Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with Him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to Him? While in heaven, He is also with us and we while on earth, are with Him. He is here with us by His divinity, His power and His love. We cannot be in heaven, as He is on earth, by divinity but in Him, we can be there, by love.
Salvator Dali
Gustave Dore
Unknown
Rembrandt
He did not leave heaven when He came down to us, nor did He withdraw from us when He went up again into heaven. The fact that He was in heaven even while He was on earth is borne out, by His own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.
These words are explained by our oneness with Christ, for He is our head and we are His body. No one ascended into heaven except Christ, because we also are Christ: He is the Son of Man by His union with us and we by our union with Him are the sons of God. So the Apostle says: Just as the human body, which has many members, is a unity, because all the different members make one body, so is it also with Christ. He too has many members, but one body.
Out of compassion for us He descended from heaven and although He ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in Him by grace. Thus, no one but Christ descended and no one but Christ ascended, not because there is no distinction between the head and the body but because the body, as a unity, cannot be separated from the head.
This reading, used in the Roman Liturgy’s office of readings for the Solemn Feast (Solemnity) of the Ascension, is taken from a homily by St Augustine (Sermo de Ascensione Domini, Mai 98, 1-2, PLS 2, 494-495). The Ascension is the second glorious mystery of the Rosary.
Thought for the Day – 28 May – The Ascension of the Lord
“As a mother who teaches her children to speak and so to understand and communicate, the Church our Mother teaches us the language of faith in order to introduce us to the understanding and the life of faith” (CCC No. 71, excerpt). The life of true faith. It is a stimulating and vigorous Catholic life of love and brightness; one which cannot be shaken nor injured nor destroyed by the appearance of any earthly catastrophe so long as we ourselves remain in the Light, remembering what we have heard from the beginning, never turning from our Beloved who ascended into heaven in order to appear in the presence of God on our behalf!
Lord Jesus Christ, seated at the Right Hand of the Father, intercede for us!
When he had said this, as they were looking on,
he was lifted up and a cloud took him from their sight……….Acts 1:9
REFLECTION – “Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with Him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For just as He remained with us even after His ascension, so we too are already in heaven with Him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.”………………………St. Augustine
When we went down into the Font of Baptism we were incorporated into Jesus Christ, made members of His Body, the Church. Therefore, as Augustine also wrote, “Where the Head is, there is the Body, where I am, there is my Church, we too are one; the Church is in me and I in her and we two are your Beloved and your Lover.” In other words, we have ascended with the Lord!
PRAYER – Holy Father, teach me and help me to ‘abide’ in Your Son, who by ascending to You, took me too with Him. For He is my root and my foundation and I live only in Him! My Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ my Lord, be with me always and intercede for us all with our Father. Amen
AnaStpaul 
You must be logged in to post a comment.