Happy feast day! It’s the day of the Ascension of Our Lord. This is one of the Ascension homilies included in the book Living the Mysteries: A Guide for Unfinished Christians, which I co-authored with Scott Hahn.

Pope St. Leo I (the Great)
Ascend with Jesus

Christ’s ascension marked the exaltation of our human nature. We saw ourselves divinized when our nature rose to glory in the person of Jesus.

Amidst these miracles, when the disciples were troubled by anxieties, the Lord appeared in their midst and said, “Peace be with you” (Jn 20:26). So that what was passing through their hearts might not remain. For they thought they saw a ghost, but He showed that their thoughts were wrong. He showed their doubting eyes the marks of the cross still in His hands and feet, and invited them to touch Him with careful scrutiny. For the traces of the nails and spear had been kept in order to heal the wounds of unbelieving hearts. Thus, not with wavering faith, but with steadfast knowledge, they might understand that the nature that had lain in the tomb was soon to sit on God the Father’s throne.

So, dearly beloved, throughout this time that passed between the Lord’s resurrection and ascension, God’s providence had this in mind, taught this, and impressed it upon both the eyes and hearts of His people: that the Lord Jesus Christ might be recognized as truly risen, just as He was truly born, truly suffered, and truly died. That’s why the blessed Apostles and all the disciples — fearful as they had been at His death on the cross, and hesitant in believing His Resurrection — were so strengthened by the clear truth that, when the Lord entered the heights of heaven, not only were they untouched by sadness, but were even filled with great joy.

The cause of their rejoicing was truly great and indescribable when, in the sight of the heavenly multitude, our human nature ascended above the dignity of all heavenly creatures, passing the ranks of the angels and rising beyond the archangels’ heights. This ascension was unlimited by any elevation, till our nature was received to sit with the Eternal Father, joined to the throne of His glory, as His divine nature was joined to human nature in the Son.

Since then, Christ’s ascension is our exaltation. For there is hope that the body will be raised to the glory where the head has gone before. So, dearly beloved, let us rejoice with delight in our holy thanksgiving. For on the day of the ascension we have not only been confirmed as possessors of paradise, but in Christ we have even pierced through to the heights of heaven. We have gained much greater things through Christ’s indescribable grace than we had lost through the devil’s malice. Those whom our raging enemy had driven away from the bliss of our first home, the Son of God has made members of Himself and placed at the right hand of the Father, with whom He lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

Take It to Prayer

• We have gained much greater things through Christ’s indescribable grace than we had lost through the devil’s malice.

• When Jesus ascended to heaven, our human nature rose above the dignity of all heavenly creatures, passing the ranks of the angels and archangels.

• Our nature was received to sit with the Eternal Father, joined to the throne of His glory, as His divine nature was joined to human nature in the Son.

Learn It by Heart

• Christ’s ascension is our exaltation. For there is hope that the body will be raised to the glory where the head has gone before.

Apply It to Your Life

• Meditate often on heaven. Now that you are divinized in Christ, it is your one true home. A child of God, you can find rest only in the life of the Trinity. Yet that life begins now, in mystery, in the sacraments. You rise to heaven when you confess the sins that weigh you down. Your Communion is in heaven when you go to Mass.

Insight Scoop has posted, free of charge, Henri de Lubac’s lovely introduction to his book History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen. I hope you own the book. It goes a long way in helping us understand why Pope Benedict XVI spent not one, but two audience talks praising the work of Origen (here and here).

Absolutely free of charge: Insight Scoop has posted the beautiful chapter What Is Tradition? from Yves Congar’s The Meaning of Tradition.

Critical scholars make much of the apparent conflict between the way the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) portray the events leading up to the Lord’s Passion and John’s account. The synoptics describe the Last Supper as a Passover meal, but John doesn’t. The synoptics place the crucifixion on the day after Passover, while John places it on the day before, at the hour when the lambs were sacrificed.

As if to complicate matters, some of the Syriac Fathers — those who were closest to the Jewish milieu of Jesus and the Apostles — spoke of the Last Supper taking place on a Tuesday, with the crucifixion on Friday.

Pope Benedict made something of a splash this year in his homily for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. He proposed what some theologians and reporters called a “novel approach” to the problem. But it’s not really so novel. It was proposed in the mid-twentieth century by French scholar Annie Jaubert, who found in the Dead Sea Scrolls a key to reconciling the accounts of the Synoptics, John, and the Syriac Fathers. Here’s the Pope’s summary of the problem and solution:

It was on the eve of his Passion that Jesus together with his disciples celebrated this meal with its multiple meanings. This is the context in which we must understand the new Passover which he has given to us in the Blessed Eucharist.

There is an apparent discrepancy in the Evangelists’ accounts, between John’s Gospel on the one hand, and what on the other Mathew, Mark and Luke tell us.

According to John, Jesus died on the Cross at the very moment when the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the temple. The death of Jesus and the sacrifice of the lambs coincided.
However, this means that he must have died the day before Easter and could not, therefore, have celebrated the Passover meal in person – this, at any rate, is how it appears.

According to the three Synoptic Gospels, the Last Supper of Jesus was instead a Passover meal into whose traditional form he integrated the innovation of the gift of his Body and Blood.

This contradiction seemed unsolvable until a few years ago. The majority of exegetes were of the opinion that John was reluctant to tell us the true historical date of Jesus’ death, but rather chose a symbolic date to highlight the deeper truth: Jesus is the new, true Lamb who poured out his Blood for us all.

In the meantime, the discovery of the [Dead Sea] Scrolls at Qumran has led us to a possible and convincing solution which, although it is not yet accepted by everyone, is a highly plausible hypothesis. We can now say that John’s account is historically precise.

Jesus truly shed his blood on the eve of Easter at the time of the immolation of the lambs.
In all likelihood, however, he celebrated the Passover with his disciples in accordance with the Qumran calendar, hence, at least one day earlier; he celebrated it without a lamb, like the Qumran community which did not recognize Herod’s temple and was waiting for the new temple.

Consequently, Jesus celebrated the Passover without a lamb – no, not without a lamb: instead of the lamb he gave himself, his Body and his Blood. Thus, he anticipated his death in a manner consistent with his words: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (Jn 10: 18).

At the time when he offered his Body and his Blood to the disciples, he was truly fulfilling this affirmation. He himself offered his own life. Only in this way did the ancient Passover acquire its true meaning.

In his Eucharistic catecheses, St John Chrysostom once wrote: Moses, what are you saying? Does the blood of a lamb purify men and women? Does it save them from death? How can the blood of an animal purify people, save people or have power over death? In fact, Chrysostom continues, the immolation of the lamb could be a merely symbolic act, hence, the expression of expectation and hope in One who could accomplish what the sacrifice of an animal was incapable of accomplishing.

My friend Scott Hahn agrees with the pope on this question. Scott touched on the Jaubert solution in his essay The Fourth Cup, which I heartily recommend:

I find the supposed conflict between the synoptics and John is resolved to my satisfaction by Annie Jaubert, The Date of the Last Supper (Staten Island: Alba House, 1965). She argues two calendars were operative in Christ’s time and accepts the ancient Syriac testimony of a “Holy Tuesday” institution of the Eucharist. Granted, there are difficulties in that, but her work helps harmonize the five trials of Jesus (Annas, Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod, and Pilate), which fit much easier into a Tuesday to-Friday time frame than in a Thursday-midnight-to-morning frame.

This article points to some excellent online patristic and biblical resources: The Wired Scholar: Five Free Tools You May Not Know About.

Unless you’ve been living in the fourth century, you’ve certainly heard by now that Francis Beckwith resigned this week as president of the Evangelical Theological Society. A week earlier, the philosopher had returned to full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. But since there are certainly readers of this blog who have applied for permanent-residency visas in the fourth century, I figured I’d better post the news. Dr. Beckwith spoke with Christianity Today about the whys and wherefors. Of course the Fathers played an important role:

I do think we have to admit that the way that we read Scripture is through the ideas and concepts that have been passed down to us by a great tradition.

Look, you’re not going to come up with the Nicene Creed by just picking up the Bible. Does the Bible contribute to our understanding? Absolutely it does; the Nicene Creed is consistent with Scripture. But you needed a church that had a self-understanding in order to articulate that in any clear way. I am not saying that necessarily means that you have to be a Catholic. But we have to understand that the Reformation only makes sense against the backdrop of a tradition that was already there. Calvin and Luther did not go back and re-write Nicea. They took it for granted. There’s nothing wrong with conceding that and celebrating it and reading those authors.

Looking at tradition would also help evangelicals learn about Christian liturgical traditions, like Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism, that many evangelicals reject because they say liturgy is unbiblical. When did these practices come to be? It turns out many of them came to be very early on in church history when people were close historically to the apostles themselves. There must be something to these practices that the early Christians thought was perfectly consistent with what they had received from the apostles.

That may not convince them that it is right, but at least it would show them that it was widely held and that Christians who were right there on top of the early church practiced them. That was quite liberating for me, when I became aware of the writings of some of the church fathers and especially the liturgical aspects. Some of the folks who have read my blog post on my return to the church have misunderstood my reading of the church fathers. They think I went back and tried to find theology, and that really wasn’t it for me. It was the practices of the church that were more important. I did some research years ago on the relationship of Greek philosophy and the Christian doctrine of God, and that was very helpful. But that’s when I first began reading the fathers. One finds the practice of penance very early on during the times in which Christians were being persecuted. Some of the Christians who had denied their faith had to publicly repent for their sins and suffer penance. This was considered to be perfectly consistent with a doctrine of faith.

We want to reward people who promote the reading of the Fathers so well. So buy the man’s books!

Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights

Are You Politically Correct?: Debating America’s Cultural Standards

Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air

Ben C. Smith has posted another installment in his series on the ancient canons of the New Testament. This one covers the list in the Apostolic Constitutions — which includes many of the familiar books, plus the works attributed to Clement of Rome.

Archaeology magazine directs our attention to the latest on the discovery of King Herod’s tomb: news with photos from AFP; a drawing of the old guy’s sarcophagus; and a monumental staircase built especially for Herod’s funeral.

In what do we find Herod’s greatness? His buildings, of course, like the grand, reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem. But he was truly prodigious in his cruelty. The gospels are not the only record of his perverted deeds. Many of his contemporaries noticed. The old Catholic Encyclopedia provides a rap sheet, largely compiled from Josephus. (I’ve further condensed it here.)

During the first period he secured himself on the throne by removing rivals of the Hasmonean line. He put to death Hyrcanus, grandfather of [Herod’s wife] Mariamne, and Aristobulus her brother, whom though but seventeen years old he had appointed high-priest. Their only offence was that they were very popular. Mariamne also was executed in 29 B. C.; and her mother Alexandra, 28 B. C. He put to death even his own sons, Aristobulus and Alexander (6 B. C.), whom Antipater, his son by Doris, had accused of plotting against their father’s life. This same Antipater was himself accused and convicted of having prepared poison for his father, and put to death. The last joy of the dying king was afforded by the letter from Rome authorizing him to kill his son; five days later, like another Antiochus under a curse, he died. In the hot springs of Callirrhoe, east of the Dead Sea, the king sought relief from the sickness that was to bring him to the grave. When his end drew near, he gave orders to have the principal men of the country shut up in the hippodrome at Jericho and slaughtered as soon as he had passed away, that his grave might not be without the tribute of tears.

The Emperor Augustus — on hearing that Herod killed his children, but strove to keep kosher — observed that he’d rather be Herod’s pig than his son.

So, you see, St. Matthew was actually pretty kind to the guy. Here’s St. Peter Chyrsologus again:

[Herod told the Magi] “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him bring me word.” Appropriately did Herod say, “Bring me word,” for the one who hastens to come to Christ always brings a word of renunciation to the devil.