Kelsi Vanada

Dear Friends,

This Easter season, I’ve been trying to ponder what it means to live in the light of Christ’s resurrection, or to have a resurrection mindset. And today we come to Ascension Day, when the Church commemorates Christ being taken up bodily to heaven 40 days after rising from the dead. So what would an ascension mindset look like?

One of the Collects for Ascension Day is:

Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heaven, so we may also in heart and mind there ascend, and with him continually dwell; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

What might it mean to ascend into heaven in heart and mind—continually? (I can’t help but remember with a smile a fellow parishioner and friend who shared during one of Fr. Peter’s last Mosaic nights, when the theme was “The Beauty of Holiness: Death and Hope,” that the idea of singing praises to God in heaven forever sounds exhausting!)

Ascension seems to be that upward action pointing our attention at God, and being open to seeing the way God sees and loving the way God loves. But I’m thinking at the same time of the Lord’s Prayer, in which we pray that God’s kingdom would come “down” and be our reality here on earth, just as it is in heaven.

Maybe, then, an ascension mindset is that continual loop between heaven and earth, God and humanity, giving and receiving, loving and being loved.

Peace,

—Kelsi