| Ascension Thursday |
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Today is forty days after Easter. Today is ten days before Pentecost.
What does today, as a Feast, have to teach?
When I was in school it was explained that the best way to understand any of the church's holy days was to listen to its prayers. That follows from an age-old expression "lex orandi, lex credendi" meaning the law of prayer is the law of belief.
The most significant teaching prayer for today is taken from the preface, and it reads:
Today the Lord Jesus, the king of glory, the conqueror of sin and death, ascended to heaven while the angels sang his praises. Christ, the mediator between God and man, judge of the world and Lord of all, has passed beyond our sight, not to abandon us but to be our hope, Christ is the beginning, the head of the church, where he has gone, we hope to follow.
And again:
In his risen body he plainly showed himself to his disciples and was taken up to heaven in their sight to claim for us a share in his divine life.
So what are the lessons of today's prayers? They are these:
Jesus is Lord.
Jesus is away but not gone.
Jesus has not forgotten us.
Jesus leads and shows us the way to heaven.
Jesus shares his life with us.
Heaven is a real, physical place and we get to live there!
The one phrase that has always caught my own imagination is "where he has gone, we hope to follow". WOW, I'm definitely in the queue for that one. Hope you are too...
AMDG |
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