On Thursday we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension and, here in the Missions, carried the theme on to Sunday. Christ rises to heaven, Victim and Victor, taking his resurrected body up to glory, the glory that is the life of God himself.
But how can anything corporal be assimilated by God who is pure Spirit (John 4:24)? Surely there's an unfathomable divide between the two. Perhaps this is helpful, by Romano Guardini:
...by comparison with the Holy Spirit, body and soul, matter and spirit, person and thing are all “carnal.” Between all these and the Living God lies not only the distance between Creator and creature; not only the distance which divides life in grace from life in nature; but also the infinite gulf between saint and sinner which only God’s love can bridge. Before this bottomless ravine, the difference between earthly body and soul shrinks into insignificance.
That God pardons the sinner and accepts the creature into his holy presence – this is the new and overwhelming message of Christ. Once we have assimilated this truth, the additional incomprehensibility of God’s accepting not only created spirit, but also created flesh, no longer seems great. His salutary love is directed not exclusively towards the “soul” but towards man in his entirety. The new, saved man is founded on the divine humanity of Jesus, and this humanity, begun in the Annunciation, was fulfilled in the Ascension. Not until Christ has entered into the intimacy of the Father, is he the perfect God-man.
What a scandal to our blinded and earthly sense, but what a cause for awestruck joy that humanity in Christ should be elevated above the angels to the life of God himself.
Here endeth the lesson,
LSP
