by Fred Moleck
Two Ascensions
Depending when you are reading this TableTalk, you might have already celebrated Ascension.If you are reading the column on Friday and you went to Mass yesterday and heard the Ascension readings and sang, “Hail the day that sees him rise. Alleluia,” you can look forward to celebrating the Seventh Sunday of Easter on Sunday.
If you are reading the column on Friday and you went to Mass yesterday, but heard the readings that weren’t about Jesus ascending and didn’t sing, “Hail the day that sees him rise. Alleluia,” chances are that you will celebrate the Ascension of the Lord Jesus on Sunday.
The latter is liturgical law in Canada and in some dioceses in the United States. For the rest of us, it remains on Thursday and is a holy day of obligation, and it has its own church envelope, which you drop in the basket.
The reason for Ascension’s mobility is a good one. The leadership of some of the dioceses in the United States and Canada saw it a little burdensome to retain its position on Thursday.
It is not a civil holiday.
Moving the feast to Sunday made it possible for a larger portion of the faithful to hear the stories and celebrate the Ascension mysteries with full voice and full heart.
There is another reason I find much more interesting, and it deals with the forty days and fifty days metaphor.
When Ascension Thursday is marked on Thursday it completes a forty-day cycle—forty days of the Fifty Days; 40—a number revered in Jewish and Christian time.
When Ascension Thursday is moved to Sunday—thus, Ascension Sunday—the fortieth day reckoning no longer holds any importance.
This breakaway is more in tune with John’s recounting the stories of Jesus as post-resurrection accounts. Some see it all happening on the same day.
That would make for a very busy Easter Sunday and a very small liturgical calendar.
More than likely, everything we hear from the lectionaries on Sunday and other times is not chronologically step-locked.
How did the simple chronological approach develop? I have a theory. It centers around one basic tenet about any liturgical celebration—it’s not a pageant.
It is not a portrayal of the life of Jesus, such as the passion plays inspired by the venerable Oberammergau version and countless retellings of the passion by youth groups’ annual Living Stations performances.
Here is another example:
A friend described the mandatum in her home cathedral where the bishop enacted phrase by phrase the rector’s reading of John’s account of Jesus’ washing the feet of the apostles:
1. taking off his chasuble, putting on a stylized apron
2. moving to the first man
3. and so on . . . all coordinated with the proclaimed text
She now wonders if the bishop will lead the congregation in “Happy Birthday, dear Jesus” at the “family mass” on Christmas Eve.
I’ve heard of no attempt of creating a pageant for the Ascension of Jesus other than the one south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but that’s another story contained in a TableTalk a while back.
I must confess that somewhere in my post-Vatican zeal of the 1970s I led the parish’s school children in singing Blood, Sweat, and Tears’ “What goes up, must come down, spinnin’ wheel . . .” in the school’s parking lot as they released their helium-filled balloons after the school’s mass.
(Those were the days when we were trying to be relevant in spite of ecological concerns, to say nothing of liturgical propriety. We were also really big on Godspell.)
I also had to convince the pastor that it would not be a good idea for him to ascend in a hot-air balloon.
You get the idea?
Liturgy provides the arena where the Scripture is memorialized, celebrated, becomes relevant to our lives, confronts us with the living Jesus. It does not need characterizations.
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@comcast.net