Ascending to the Divine
Lk 24:46-53

Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF
Claretian Missionaries

Ascension is part of realizing God’s dreams. For Jesus, it was returning to the Father after fulfilling a mission. Fulfilling the Father’s dreams was his passion. Dreams are important, not those that we see when we are asleep, but the ones that we imagine to become, one that we imagine to change ourselves into, those that we plan when we are wide awake. Keep those dreams alive. They liberate us from the destinies that our past or genetics have determined for us. If we think our past defines us, we should know our dreams will liberate us.

The final message of Jesus before the ascension was to preach, preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins. True evangelization is to announce to people that there is a way to get liberated from their sins and their memories. There is a way to ascend out of what sedates them to their ordinary existence and wake up to the dream of God. The ascent.

It is difficult for me to go through the feast of Ascension without remembering John Climacus’ (640 AD) Scala, the Ladder of Divine Ascent ever since I read it. It is a thirty step ladder to reach a life of Christian perfection. The ascent is a journey achieved by shedding weight, renunciation is the key. Renounce what you own, who belong to until you have only your body to renounce. The more one is able to renounce the higher one ascends to the divine realms.

“The Son of God became Son of Man so that the sons of men could become sons of God.” The quote from saint Augustine absorbs the essence of the descent and ascent of Christ. The descent of Christ shared the human predicaments and the ascent opened the world of human possibilities or better say, the divine possibilities of humanity. The credo says, “he descended into the dead” waking them up to the dreams of God and he ascended to the Father, offering them the possibility of ultimate liberation out of death.

We are often too closely associated with our mundane experiences, to our real selves, hurrying, between tasks and doing rituals of the day with little vision of our ideal selves. The ascension is a time to look up and raise ourselves to a little above our ordinary experiences to our spiritual and ideal selves. Our ideal selves are the the selves that we should become: it is God’s dream for us, where everyone of us should ascent to.

I do not remember where I read this story, but the narrative kept me captivated. A boy climbs up the mast of the ship to replace the torn flag. The ship was caught in the raging sea. He managed to tie the flag. It was time to descent. He looked down and found the himself on the heaving mast against the backdrop of the waves that appeared to engulf his ship. He was terrified and could gather enough courage to look down again and climb down. Then the captain called out to him. Look up, and feel the steps of the ladder with your feet and come down. Look up…. Look up… That advice worked well. He gathered his courage to reach the deck. Ascension calls for looking up to heaven so that we can handle every descent still fixing our gaze on to the ascending Christ.

It is the way to go through the difficult journeys of our lives. To look up above the tempests of our daily lives, ascent out of what limits our full living. Earth and its cares, body and its desires are not bad by themselves. But the cares of the body and things that are near and close to us lock us into a certain prison of self-seeking behavior.

Sometimes we identify this small world of ours as the final horizon of lives. Ascension feast invites us to breach the ceilings of our prejudices and belief systems that trap us into our small worlds. Once we break the ceilings, we are able to see the sky of divine possibilities and our life living in fullness.

© Claretian Publications, Macau
Cum Approbatione Ecclesiastica 2025