Ascension

ESTHER K. MARKO

In Luke's account of Jesus' ascension we are given a clue as to the cause or motivating power which advanced Jesus beyond material sight. This final act of the Master's career has generally been classed with the supernatural, being pictured as a physical disappearance into a higher altitude. This picture has not been without beauty, depicting the risen Jesus, radiant in the consummation of his grand career, enshrouded in a cloud as if to protect mortal sight from a glory too great to bear.

In the fifty-first verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke's Gospel the account reads, "And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven." It is noteworthy that Jesus' last recorded act before he ascended was one of blessing others. In the crowning experience of his own life, approaching the glory which he so richly merited, he was yet reaching out to comfort his disciples in a final benediction. The love and compassion he reflected were immeasurable; and it was while he was in this exalted state of consciousness that his translation took place: "While he blessed them, he was parted from them."

On page 46 of our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy speaks of Jesus' "exaltation above all material conditions," and says that "this exaltation explained his ascension." On page 189 of the same book, in speaking of "all the formations of the immortal divine Mind," she writes, "They proceed from the divine source; and so, in tracing them, we constantly ascend in infinite being." Jesus' ministry gives abundant proof that he reached out perpetually to the divine source as he went about his healing work; and so he must have been constantly ascending "in infinite being." This illumination sheds a new light on the subject of ascension; and we no longer regard it as a sudden elevation to a so-called higher plane, but as a process of emergence out of materiality into spiritual consciousness, which dwells in the eternal harmony of Life divine.

When we realize that every healing Jesus accomplished for humanity brought him into closer concord with Spirit, it dawns on us that even in his ascension we must follow our Way-shower; for doing the works he bade us do will raise us, too, above materiality. It follows that as we partake more of "the mind of Christ," thus gaining the pure ideas with which to heal and bless, we realize, by degrees, our own ascension into the true consciousness of spiritual being.

As we declare God's perfection, love, and allness, and man's likeness to his Maker,—the radiant reflection of every spiritual attribute, quality, and faculty,—we rise to greater divine heights in our realizations. Dwelling with spiritual understanding on the specific phase of true substance which we wish to see unfolded, in place of the negative evidence presented by the carnal senses, results in healing. The fields "are white already to harvest," and our opportunities for doing good are as limitless as our vision.

There is no condition too trivial to be subjected to Truth's penetrating light, nor too universal in its scope for us to bring it, with whatever measure of understanding we have, into the light of Mind. For every right desire Godward, or reaching out to Spirit, we are given not only the true idea we seek, but more of the divine nature; and this spiritual gain is an added stone in the foundation of our building "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," of which Paul speaks.

By adhering to the mental signification of ascension, we shall gain the true idea of this beautiful and continuous experience, which is summed up in these words in our textbook (p. 509): "The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind's creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness—yea, the divine nature—appear in man and the universe never to disappear."

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