The Ascension

A meditation

This is painted the old way, on gold, the way the East still does it — so that you are not looking at a scene but at a truth, all of it at once.

Start at the bottom, where you are. The apostles on the hill, crowded together among the olive trees, faces turned up, hands raised. And in the middle of them, very still, his mother in dark blue, with an angel on either side of her in white, pointing upward as if to say: *there.*

Then look where they are pointing. He is in a circle of light, carried by two angels with their wings spread wide, one hand lifted in blessing, and the light around him is going up. He is leaving. He is blessing them as he leaves.

And then look higher still, at the top, above the angels — an empty throne, with a cross laid on it, and a crowd of angels around it, waiting. That is where he is going. The throne is ready. He said he was going to prepare a place, and here is the place, prepared.

Stand with the apostles and feel what they feel: he is going, and they are staying, and the sky is closing over. That is a real grief, and the picture does not pretend otherwise. But look again at his mother in the middle of them. She is not looking up in fear. She has her hands raised in the old gesture of prayer, calm, because she knows what the angels are saying: he will come back the same way he went.

Hope is not wanting something. It is knowing where he went — and that the throne is not empty forever.