The Ascension of the Lord was the confirmation of the Catholic Faith, that we may surely believe in the gift which is yet to come, from that miracle whose effect we have already felt; and that every one of the faithful, having already received such great things, may learn to hope for the things which have been promised, and through those which he knows have already been given, and hold the goodness of God, both past and present, as a pledge of the things which shall come later.
An earthly body, therefore, is lifted up above the heights of heaven; the bones, which but a little while before had lain within the narrow walls of the grave, are brought in among the hosts of Angels. Our mortal nature is given a place in the lap of immortality; and therefore the Apostle’s sacred history which we have read saith “When He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up.” (From St Augustine’s Third Sermon on the Ascension, read on the Octave in the Breviary of St Pius V.)
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The Ascension of the Lord, from a 12th century sacramentary produced for the cathedral of St Stephen in Limoges, France. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des manuscrits. Latin 9438, folio 84v. image cropped.)
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