The Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ – Ten Answers to Ten Questions

Protopresbyter Dr. George D. Dragas

 

 

1. Why did the Ascension take place after 40 days and not immediately after the Resurrection?

2. Why did the risen Christ eat broiled fish and honey?

3. Why did the Ascension take place on the Mount of Olives?

4. Why did the Apostles and the Theotokos have to be present?

5. How did the unprecedented and unique Ascension of Christ take place?

6. Why were the two manlike and white-robed Angels sent?

7. What was the message of the white-robed Angels?

8. What was the impact of the Ascension on the Apostles and on the little flock of the first Church?

9. What was the impact of the Ascension on the ranks of the Angels in the heavens?

10. Why were the imprints of the wounds preserved in the Risen Body of Christ?

 

1. Why did the Ascension take place after 40 days and not immediately after the Resurrection?

The Author of life, Who loosed the bonds of death by His Resurrection, associated with His disciples for forty days and confirmed His Resurrection to them with many proofs. He did not ascend into the heavens on the same day that He rose, because such a thing would have created doubts and questions. Otherwise, many of the unbelievers could have put forward the argument that the Resurrection was nothing more than yet another dream of pious wishes, which quickly come and more quickly pass away. For precisely this reason Christ remained on earth for forty full days, and appeared repeatedly to His disciples, and showed them the scars from His wounds, spoke to them about the prophecies which He fulfilled by His life and sufferings as man, and even ate together with them.

2. Why did the risen Christ eat broiled fish and honey?

In today’s Gospel of the Feast, we hear that Christ asked for and ate “ιχθύος οπτού μέρος και από μελισσίου κηρίου,” that is, a piece of broiled fish and of honeycomb with honey (Luke 24:42). Why is this detail mentioned? According to ecclesiastical tradition, this detail had very important allegorical significance. As regards the fish, we know that although it lives in the salty sea, its body is not salty, but sweet. In a similar way, Christ also, Who lived in the “salty sea of sin” of this world, “committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth,” that is, He committed no sin at all, nor did He utter anything deceitful (Isa. 53:9). Also, Christ remained more silent even than a fish when He underwent His saving Passion and endured those unheard-of tortures and unspeakable insults.

As regards the honey and the wax, we know that honey is sweet and wax gives light; for this reason, they are considered symbols of the spiritual delight and illumination which Christ imparts to the faithful after His Resurrection. Also, they symbolize: the first, the healing of the great bitterness of sin, which is symbolized by the gall that was given to Him in His Passion; and the second, the dispersal of the dense darkness of sin, which is symbolized by the darkness that occurred at His Crucifixion.

3. Why did the Ascension take place on the Mount of Olives?

After Christ had confirmed His Resurrection from the dead to His disciples with honey-sweet words, and had enlightened their mind and warmed their heart by His presence, He led them, on the 40th day after His Resurrection, to the Mount of Olives, which lies to the east of Jerusalem. The Ascension had to take place on this Mount because, according to an ancient tradition, the Lord will return there bodily and with glory to judge the world on the last day. There the righteous will receive mercy with the great mercy, and there sinners will lament with eternal and inconsolable lamentation. These two opposite conditions of men are indicated by the name of this Mount, because its summits are called the Mount of Olives, while its foothills are called the Valley of Weeping. The same was also foretold by the oracle of the Prophet Zechariah, who explicitly declared: “Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, and His feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives, opposite Jerusalem, from the east” (Zech. 14:4).

4. Why did the Apostles and the Theotokos have to be present?

To this Mount the Lord led His disciples and the Theotokos who gave birth to Him, so that they might see His glorious Ascension with their own eyes. His Mother according to the flesh had to be present at that great glory of her Son, so that, just as she, as Mother, was wounded in soul more than all by His Passion, so in a corresponding manner she might rejoice more than all, seeing her Son ascending with glory into the heavens, being worshipped as God by the Angels, and sitting upon the throne of Majesty above every principality and authority.

The divine Apostles also had to become eyewitnesses of His Ascension, so that they might be assured that their divine Teacher, Who was now ascending into the heavens, had come down from there, and there would await them as the true Son of God and Savior of the world.

5. How did the unprecedented and unique Ascension of Christ take place?

They had already reached the middle summit of the Mount. Before them stretched the city of Jerusalem. The hole in the ground in which the Cross had been set up was still open. The entrance to the Tomb of the Savior was also open, since the great stone with which it had been sealed was still fallen on the ground. Then the Savior turns His back toward the ungrateful city of Jerusalem, and His gaze looks toward the east, as David joyfully says in one of his Psalms: “Sing to God, Who has mounted upon the heaven of heaven toward the east” (Ps. 67:34). And as He bids farewell to His disciples, He raises His immaculate hands and blesses them for the last time—those hands with which He refashioned man, whom He had created in the beginning, and which He stretched out in love for mankind upon the Cross and united “the things that were divided,” that is, those things which were in separation. While the eyes of the disciples could not be satisfied with gazing upon that Godlike and sweetest countenance of their Lord, suddenly He began to ascend into heaven. Their gaze remained fixed upon that strange and incomprehensible sight of the bodily Ascension of the Lord, until the radiant cloud hid Him from them.

How unprecedented and unique was the majesty of this Ascension! Elijah too had been taken up into the heavens, as Scripture says; however, his ascension took place with a fiery chariot and fiery horses, because he was a mere man and needed help in order to be taken up above the earth. But Christ was the God-man, Who ascended by Himself, by His omnipotence alone.

As regards that cloud, it was the Holy Spirit, just as happened also at the Transfiguration of Christ. Just as His descent and His Incarnation took place “of the Holy Spirit,” according to Gabriel’s message to the Virgin: “The Spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee” (Luke 1:35), so also now He “ascends together” — ascends together with the Holy Spirit — because He accompanies Him and coexists with Him as consubstantial with Him, worshipped and glorified together with Him.

6. Why were the two manlike and white-robed Angels sent?

While the holy Apostles were gazing in amazement into heaven, two men appeared to them clothed in white garments. These two men were Angels who had taken human form so as not to frighten the disciples. And they were white-robed in order to reveal their purity and the enlightening and joyful message which they had been sent to deliver. The ascended Christ sent them in order to console the disciples at the moment of their sorrow over His departure, but also to enlighten them that their Lord, now invisible, was seated at the right hand of God the Father, and that He would descend again to the earth to judge all men, the living and the dead.

7. What was the message of the white-robed Angels?

“Men of Galilee,” they said to them, “why do you stand with your gaze fixed upon the heavens? This Jesus, Whom you see today being taken up, will return to judge the world, and His return will be the same as His Ascension.” That is, He will come from heaven wearing the same immaculate Body which He received from the blood of the pure Virgin, and which will have upon it the wounds engraved that He received in His Passion. Now only you few see Him ascending into heaven; but when He returns, all the tribes of the earth will see Him descending from there with glory upon the clouds. This glorious descent of His will become a cause of blessedness and joy for those who lived righteously. For sinners, however, it will be a cause of grief and calamity.

8. What was the impact of the Ascension on the Apostles and on the little flock of the first Church?

The Apostles heard these things and worshipped the Savior at His Ascension, and afterward returned with joy to Jerusalem. Their joy was very great, because they learned definitively that their divine Teacher is true God, Who ascended into the heavens not in order to abandon the earth, but in order to unite it with heaven.

Their joy was also very great because they received the blessing of their Savior at His Ascension. With this blessing, the small Church of the disciples, that little flock, increased within a short time and became very great; and, receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit, it was revealed as that Church which was established in all parts of the earth.

9. What was the impact of the Ascension on the ranks of the Angels in the heavens?

While these things were taking place on earth because of the Ascension, in the heavens the Angels were holding a majestic festival. The orders of the Angels who had served the Savior on earth and were now accompanying Him in His divine Ascension called upon the upper ranks to open the heavenly gates, so that the King of Glory might enter.

“Lift up your gates, O princes,” sings David the Prophet-King, “and be lifted up, ye everlasting gates, and the King of Glory shall enter” (Ps. 23:7).

Because, through His saving Passion, Christ the Savior became more glorious and more exalted—as the Apostle Paul expresses it: “He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross; therefore God also highly exalted Him and granted Him the name which is above every name” (Phil. 2:9)—for this reason the gates of heaven also demand to be made higher, in order to receive Him worthily.

Also, because the glory of the Conqueror of Hades and death, which could not be contained by the small earth, filled the heavens, they too — the Angels — demand to be lifted up at His appearing.

However, the higher ranks of the Angels, seeing a human body being carried up above them, were seized with awe and amazement. For just as a man who sees an Angel on earth is seized with fearful amazement, so also the bodiless Angels, seeing then a body being raised up in a cloud, asked in astonishment to learn about this strange sight, seeking twice to be assured: Who is this King of Glory?

But when they learned that He is the Lord mighty in battles, Who wrestled with the devil and overthrew him, and Who now ascends into the heavens, they wondered how that most radiant Body was red, and they asked: “Who is this that comes from Edom?” as the first of the prophets chants, “the redness of His garments from Bozrah? This one is beautiful in His apparel” (Isaiah 63:1). That is, who is this earthly one who comes wearing flesh like a most radiant and red garment? For “earthly” is the meaning of Edom, and “flesh” is Bozrah; and the point of reference here is that glorified Body of the Master Christ, which, during His ascent into the heavens, appeared red because it bore upon it the mark of the wounds of His immaculate side, hands, and feet.

10. Why were the imprints of the wounds preserved in the Risen Body of Christ?

But how were the wounds visible in that incorrupt body? What was visible was a matter of dispensation, and its purpose was to reveal the ineffable and exceeding love of the God-man for man. That is, He condescended not only to receive wounds, but also, after His Resurrection, to preserve them in a strange manner upon that incorruptible Body, and to show them at His Ascension also to the world of the Angels, as the symbols of His Passion and as the indelible proofs of His love toward us men.

He also preserved the wounds of His immaculate Body in order to persuade us never to forget His sufferings; for when we have them before us, our heart will be flooded with gratitude toward Him and with holy feelings. Nothing else, says the sacred Chrysostom, is capable of producing these saving effects within us as much as seeing God carrying the traces of the Cross even to the throne of His majesty.

According to the sacred Augustine, the God-man preserved His wounds in the heavens in order to show us that even in the state of His glory He will not forget us, as indeed the chief of the prophets also assures us of this: “Behold, I have depicted thy walls upon My hands, and thou art continually before Me” (Isa. 49:16); that is, He will never forget us, because He will have us written with indelible letters upon His hands and will intercede for us before God the Father.

Perhaps He even preserved the wounds in order to teach us that only through sufferings and afflictions shall we be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. If the God-man Himself was exalted through the Passion of the Cross, and if He was glorified through a shameful death, then how shall we be able to enter that glory without walking the narrow way of virtue, and without enduring afflictions and temptations while fighting the good fight? This is completely impossible.

 

Greek source:

https://fdathanasiou-parakatathiki.blogspot.com/2026/05/blog-post_246.html