More on the Ascension

Yesterday I blogged about how in younger days I used to envy the disciples and others who actually saw and heard Jesus in the flesh, until I realised that as long as he was in the flesh his power was limited to external contact; he had to ascend in order to descend to come internally to live in people's minds and hearts. This morning I read in the Office of Readings a wonderful meditation on the Ascension by St Leo the Great - one of the finest writers among the Fathers.

'The truth is that the Son of Man was revealed as Son of God in a more perfect and transcendent way once he had entered into his Father’s glory; he now began to be indescribably more present in his divinity to those from whom he was further removed in his humanity. A more mature faith enabled their minds to stretch upward to the Son in his equality with the Father; it no longer needed contact with Christ’s tangible body, in which as man he is inferior to the Father. For while his glorified body retained the same nature, the faith of those who believed in him was now summoned to heights where, as the Father’s equal, the only-begotten Son is reached not by physical handling but by spiritual discernment.'