In Christi ascensionem

A discourse of our father among the saints, John Chrysostom, on the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. "Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth exult, for today Jesus, having dissolved the partition-wall of the barrier," according to Paul, and having made peace between God and our nature, has joined the upper to the lower. Today the only-begotten has offered to the Father the firstfruits of the nature which he took from us; today the sacrifice that was made for the world has been offered living to God. Today the dragon has been beheaded; today the serpent has been killed; today the devil has been cast out of heaven; today the sin of humanity has been abolished. Today the man who was exiled from paradise because of Adam's disobedience has, through the second Adam, not entered an earthly paradise, "but has ascended into heaven itself," according to the blessed Paul, "now to appear before the face of God." And who are the witnesses of the Lord's ascension into the heavens? Twelve disciples. But do you doubt, O Jew, and disbelieve the apostles of Christ and the eyes that saw the Lord ascending into the heavens on a cloud? Do you not trust so many witnesses? Then do you not even believe the lawgiver Moses? For what does Moses say? "Every word shall be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses." Wretched and miserable one: Moses the lawgiver says that three agreeing witnesses are worthy of belief concerning any matter; and when Luke the Evangelist produces four times three trustworthy witnesses, do you reject them, profane and lawless one?

Let the prophet Isaiah say, “Your neck is an iron sinew, and your forehead is bronze.” Does he not persuade you with our twelve witnesses, who were eyewitnesses of the Lord’s assumption into the heavens? Let the prophet Daniel alone now silence you; even if you shamelessly persist ten thousand times, you cannot contradict him. Let the prophet Daniel come, stopping your shameless mouth, just as he once stopped that of the dragon, and also bursting your belly, as he then did that beast’s. What then did Daniel say, prophesying about the Lord’s assumption? Let us hear: “I was watching,” he says, “and behold, upon the clouds of heaven, there was one like a son of man ascending.” For his second coming will be similar to his first assumption, just as the book of Acts indicated, saying: “As the apostles were gazing intently while the Lord was proceeding into heaven, and behold, two men stood beside them in white raiment, who said: ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking at the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same manner as you beheld him proceeding into heaven.’” Pay close attention, I beg you, to how the prophet clearly indicated the hypostases: “Behold,” he says, “upon the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man coming; and he reached the Ancient of Days.” And let us consider what the end of the prophecy is: “And to him,” it says, “were given the dominion and the honor and the kingdom.” Understand wisely to whom he says the dominion was given: not to the eternally co-existing God the Word with the Father.

For he always has power, but it is to the one united with him from Mary, the ensouled body, which today ascends into the heavens on a cloud. For he is the same, both God and perfect man. “To him, therefore, was given the rule and the honor and the authority and the kingdom” according to the economy of the flesh. “And all peoples, tribes, tongues will serve him, because his authority is eternal authority, which will not pass away nor be destroyed,” and “his kingdom will not be given to another people.” Let the Jews be ashamed, reading the prophets and being ignorant of the prophesied Christ; but let us worship and glorify him, because his is the glory and the power unto the ages of ages. Amen.