With the solemnity of Jesus’ ascension to heaven, the earthly life of Jesus ends who with his body, in the presence of the apostles, physically unites the Father, in order not to appear on Earth until his second coming (Parusìa) for the final judgment.
This holiday is very ancient and is already attested starting from the 4th century. For the Catholic Church and the Protestant churches, the ascension is normally ran 40 days after Easter, that is, the Thursday of the sixth week of the Easter time, that is, the one following the VI Easter Sunday.
In the I believe of the apostles It is mentioned with these words: «Jesus has risen to heaven, sits on the right of the Father. And again he will come, in glory, to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will end ».
In the Orthodox Church Ascension is one of the 12 big holidays. The date of the celebration is established starting from the date of Easter in the Orthodox calendar. ANDSSA is known both with Greek term Analepsis (go up) both with Episodic (salvation). The latter term stresses that Jesus climbing to heaven completed the work of redemption. The acts are still clearer, which explicitly appoint the Mount of the Ulivi, since after the ascension the disciples “returned to Jerusalem from the Monte Detto degli Ulivi, who is close to Jerusalem as much as the path allowed on a Saturday.” (Acts 1:12) the tradition has consecrated this place as the place Mount of the Ascension.
Jerusalem, newsstands
What is the biblical sense of the word ascension?
According to a spontaneous and universal conception, recognized by the Bible, God lives in a higher place and the man to meet him must rise, go up. The idea of rapprochement with God is spontaneously given from the mountain and in the exodus (19.3), the prohibition of climbing towards Sinai, which implied above all this approach to the Lord is transmitted to Moses; “Delimit the mountain all around and tell the people; do not go up to the mountain and do not touch the slopes. Anyone who touches the slopes will be put to death”.
IAVè’s command does not refer so much to a local climb, but to a spiritual approach; You must first purify and collect in order to hear his voice. Not only God lives at the top, but has chosen the high places to establish his home; Even to go to its sanctuaries you have to ‘go up’. So along the whole Bible, the references to “climbing” are many and continuous and when Jerusalem takes the place of the early sanctuaries, the crowds of the pilgrims’ climb the Santo Santo; “Ascending” to Jerusalem, it meant going to Iavè, and the term, obliged by the real geographical position, was used both by popular symbolism for those who entered the promised land, as for whom ‘saliva’ in the Holy City.
In the New Testament, Jesus himself “rises” to Jerusalem with his parents, when he meets with the doctors in the temple and still “salt” to the Holy City, as a prelude to the “elevation” on the cross and the glorious ascension.
What are the texts that talk about this event?
The books of the New Testament contain sporadic hints to the mystery of ascension; The Gospels of Matteo and John do not talk about it and both end with the story of appearances posterior to the resurrection. Marco ends saying: “Jesus … he was hired in heaven and assumed himself to the right of God” (XVI, 10); On the other hand, Luca talks about it: “Then he led them to Betania, and raised his hands, blessed them. And it happened that in blessing them he detached from them and was brought to the sky” (XXIV, 50-51).
Again Luca in the acts of the Apostles, attributed to him as an author since the early days, to the initial chapter (1, 11), places the ascension on the mountain of the olive trees, on the 40th day after Easter and adds: “Having said that, he was raised at the top under their eyes and a cloud subtracted it from their gaze. And since they were staring at the sky while he left, here are two men in white clothes presented themselves to them and said: men of Galilee, why are you watching the sky? This Jesus, who was hired between you up to the sky, will return one day in the same way that you saw him go to heaven “.
The other authors only occasionally hint at the fact or assume him, Saint Paul himself, despite knowing the relationship between the resurrection and glorification, does not arise the problem of how Jesus entered the celestial world and has transfigured himself; In fact, in the various letters he does not mention the transition from the terrestrial to the celestial phase. But they reiterate the intronation of Christ to the right of the Father, where he will remain until the end of the centuries, cloaked in power and glory; “If therefore you are risen with Christ, look for the things of up there, where Christ is granted to the right of God; think of the things of up there, not those of the earth; in fact you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God!” (Colossians, 3, 1-3).
Pietro Perugino, Ascension of Christ
What are the historical sources?
Luca, the third evangelist, in the acts of the apostles specifies that Jesus after his passion, showed himself to the remaining eleven remaining, with many evidence, appearing to them for forty days and speaking of the kingdom of God; It must be said that the number of ‘forty days’ is full of symbolisms, which often occurs in the events of the wandering Jewish people, But also with Jesus, who fasting in the desert for 40 days. St. Paul in the same ‘acts’ (13, 31) says that the Lord showed up for “many days”, without specifying the number, therefore it is reliable hypothesis, that it is a symbolic number.
The ascension according to Luca, took place on the Mount of the Ulivi, When Jesus with the apostles to whom he had appeared, he started towards Bethany, after repeating his promises and invoked the divine protection and assistance on them, and raising himself towards the sky as described before (acts, 1-11). Mount Oliveto, from whom Jesus went to heaven, was embellished with Sant’Elena, mother of Emperor Constantine with a beautiful basilica; Towards the end of the fourth century, the rich matrona pomenia built another large basilica, rich in mosaics and precious marbles, on the type of the Pantheon of Rome, in the precise place of the ascension marked in the center by a small roundabout.
Then in the alternate events that saw in the opposing centuries Muslim and Christians, Arabs and Crusaders, in the end the basilicas were destroyed; In 1920-27 by the vote of the Catholic world, a grandiose temple was erected on the remains of the excavations to the Sacred Heart, while the round newsstand of the church of Poemenia became a small octagonal mosque since the 16th century.
What is the meaning of the ascension?
St. John in the fourth gospel, he places the triumph of Christ in his completeness in the resurrection, and moreover the other evangelists also giving little importance to the ascension, confirm that the real ascension, that is, the transfiguration and passage of Jesus in the world of glory, took place on Easter morning, Event escaped every experience and out of any human control.
Therefore, by correcting a sufficiently widespread mentality, the evangelical texts invite to place the ascension and intonation of Jesus to the right of the Father, on the same day of his death, he then returned from heaven to manifest himself to his and complete his preaching for a period of ‘forty’ days.
Therefore the ascension told by Luca, Marco and by the acts of the apostles, does not refer to the first entry of the Savior into glory, but rather the last appearance and departure which closes its visible events on Earth.
Therefore the intent of the tales of the ascension It is not to describe the real return to the Father, but to make known some sections of the last manifestation of Jesus, A manifestation of leave, necessary because he must return to his father to complete the whole redemption: “If I don’t go, the consolator will not come to you, if instead I go I will send it to you” (John 16, 5-7). The catechism of the Catholic Church gives rise to this definition: “After forty days from when he had shown himself to the apostles under the traits of an ordinary humanity, which veiled his glory of Risen One, Christ rises to the sky and sits on the right of the Father. He is the Lord, who now reigns with his humanity in the eternal glory of the Son of God and incessantly intercedes in our favor. And he gives us the hope of reaching him one day, having prepared a place. “
Andrea Mantegna, Ascension, 1460, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Is it also a party from a civilian point of view?
The first testimony of the Ascension Feast is given by the historian of the origins of the Church, the bishop of Caesarea, Eusebio (265-340); theFesta falling on Thursday following the fifth Sunday after Easter, it is a mobile party and in some Catholic nations it is a feast of precept, recognized in the civil calendar in all respects.
In Italy after agreement with the Italian State, which required a festive reform, to eliminate some holidays, the Italian Episcopal Conference set the liturgical and civil festival, on the Sunday following the canons 40 days after Easter. In the Ambrosian rite, however, it is celebrated on Thursday.
On the day of the ascension, many popular Italian festivals are connected in which ancient traditions relive, especially linked to the therapeutic value, which would be conferred from a divine blessing to the waters.
TO Venice A large fair took place, accompanied by the “marriage of the sea”, a ceremony in which the doge aboard the “Bucintoro”, threw a ring into the waters of the lagoon, to symbolize the domain of Venice on the sea; to Bari the blessing of marine waters, a Florence The “Grillo Festa” is celebrated.
How was the ascension in art been depicted?
The story of the Scriptures and the liturgical celebration of this mystery we can find them in miniatures of famous codes, among all the Syrian Evangelical of Rabula in the Laurenziana Library of Florence, and in mosaics and habit starting from the century. V. The theme of ascension, he adapted well to the vertical rhythm of the eardrums, above the doors of the Romanesque and Gothic churches; Example Insigne the eardrum of the northern door of the Chartres cathedral (XII century). But the representation reached considerable artistic value with Giotto (1266-1337) which depicted the ascension in the Scrovegni chapel in Padua. We also remember a fresco by Buffalmacco (XIII century) in the Pisa Camposanto; a terracotta by Luca della Robbia (1400-1482) in the National Museum of Florence; A fresco by Melozzo da Forlì († 1494) now in the Quirinale palace in Rome; a MANTEGNA table (1431-1506) in Florence, Uffizi Gallery; a Pala del Perugino († 1523) now in the Lyon museum; The well -known fresco of Correggio († 1534) in the dome of the church of S. Giovanni in Parma; The fresco of Tintoretto († 1594) in the S. Rocco school in Venice. In an ampoule of the Treasury of the Cathedral of Monza, Christ ascends in the sky, according to a typical oriental iconography, seated on the throne; In other depictions he ascends to heaven between a crowd of angels, in the face of the ecstatic looks of the apostles and the Virgin.
