Vigils Reading

THE ASCENSION

AND CHRISTIAN PRAYER

By Thomas Merton

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At the Ascension, in the sight of the disciples, “the nature of humankind

soared above the dignity of all the creatures of heaven” and “there was to be no

limit to the advancement of Christ’s humanity until, seated together with the

eternal Father, it might share enthroned the glory of Him whose nature it

shared in the son.” And of course, the Fathers never ceased to remind their

hearers that this same humanity of Christ which was enthroned with the Father

in the divine glory, was to return and judge the world. “He set a limit to His

bodily presence, and would remain at the right hand of the Father until He

should return in the same flesh in which He had ascended.” Monastic prayer is

eschatological and is centered on the expectation of the Parousia, the advent of

the “immortal and invisible King of ages” who is both “God alone” and the

Christ, our Redeemer and Liberator…

St Leo says that with Christ’s ascension into heaven we have recovered

possession of paradise, and not only that, “we have even penetrated, in Christ,

into the height of heaven,” we have been enthroned with Him because we are

“one Body” with Him. This is the reason why we should rejoice at His going to

the Father… He is not separated from us unless we choose to remain bound to

the earth by our passions. In contemplation we experience, at least obscurely,

something of this mystery of our union with Him now in heaven.

This has important implications for the life of prayer. The life of the monk,

being that of a Christian, is a way of living in heaven. While living bodily in exile

and in his earthly pilgrimage, the monk is already spiritually in paradise and in

heaven where he has ascended with Christ. That is to say, although he is not

physically present in heaven, he is free to come and go there as he pleases, in

spirit, in prayer, in faith, in thanksgiving, praise and love, because he already

“is” there mystically in Christ. “Let us therefore, exult with a worthy and

spiritual joy, happy before God in thanksgiving, and let us lift up the free eyes

of our heart to that height where Christ is.”…

Christ has made us His friends by making known to us “the joys of interior

charity and the festival of the heavenly country which He daily makes present

in our minds by the desire of love.” And St Gregory explains that this loving

knowledge of heavenly things is very real indeed, no mere fancy: “for when,

hearing of heavenly things, we love them, we already know the things we love,

for our love itself is a way of knowing.” It is by the charity of Christ in our hearts

that we “are in heaven” and know the things of heaven.