Jesus Ascends into Heaven!
“Why do you stand looking towards heaven?”
Contemporary American artist Chris Cook — a native of the state of Georgia, who identifies as a “painter of the American South” — here depicts the Men of Galilee. Like much of his spiritual art (which is eclectic and spans genres and styles), Cook’s depiction takes an unusual and provocative take on its subject — in this case, the Ascension. The focus is not on Jesus — as it typically is, in depictions of this moment — but on the Disciples, with their necks comically distended as they crane upwards towards the heavens. Jesus is gone — he has disappeared from their sight already. But perhaps these Disciples, lingering, still see him there, beyond the frame of what is visible in this depiction. The artist conceals, as well as reveals: here, Jesus — the subject of this piece — has become fully invisible, even as he fully determines the content of the scene.
He was taken up before their eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
— The Evangelist St. Luke (Acts 1:9)
Feast of the Ascension
Texts for Today
Prayer
Almighty God, whose only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven: May our hearts and minds also there ascend, and with him continually dwell; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Thou art gone up on high…
Polish Countertenor Jakub Orlinski performs beautifully that rich aria from the middle of Handel’s Messiah, based on Ps: 68:18.
Thou art gone up on high; Thou hast led captivity captive, and received gifts for men; yea, even from Thine enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among them.
Interestingly, the libretto of the Messiah seems to elide the Resurrection and the Ascension into a single event, and the concluding sections of the Oratorio gesture towards the promise and the possibility of our eternal sharing in Christ’s resurrection life. It is a presentation of the life of Christ that is more theological than it is historical, even more than the theological history we already have in the Gospels and the Book of Acts.
