ABSTRACT

In Late Antiquity, the story of Jesus’ ascent to heaven stirred the imagination. As the final episode in Luke’s gospel and the opening episode in the Acts of the Apostles, the ascent marked a ‘last look’. 1 Yet, this near-doublet raised mixed emotions. How to reconcile, on the one hand, Luke’s euphoric outlook celebrating Jesus’ affectionate assurance of ongoing presence, with Acts’ somewhat dysphoric ‘men in white’ confronting the disciples with the ‘wake-up call’ of separation and absence? 2 Rituals such as the eucharist played an important role in mediating absence and presence of Christ’s physical body. 3 Storytelling and sermons also acknowledged that ‘painful breach’. 4 For Irenaeus of Lyons, the ascent was an eruption of sight and sound. Although the Word had ‘descended invisible to creatures’, its incarnation could not escape the notice of lower angels. As Jesus ascended, they cried, ‘Lift up your gates, [O, Princes], and be lifted up, you everlasting gates; that King of Glory shall enter in’. 5 Likewise the Ascension of Isaiah imagined how the descending Christ eluded the notice of the angelic powers, yet appeared in plain sight to the earthly disciples. 6