Ascension of the Lord - celebration of the joy and dignity of our human nature

Thursday, May 25, the fortieth day after Easter, was the celebration of the Ascension of Jesus Christ and Romanian Heroes' Day, a national holiday of the Romanian people. His Grace Bishop Ioan Casian served the Divine Liturgy at Saint George Episcopal Cathedral in Saint-Hubert. During the service, Romanians who fell on the battlefields were mentioned.

In the homily delivered at the end of the service, the hierarch said: "St. Roman the Melodist speaks in one of his hymns dedicated to the Ascension of the Lord that what actually ascends to heaven is our human nature through the person of Christ the Savior. He insists and emphasizes the understanding of the Church in this regard. The Son of God descending from heaven never separated from God the Father and the Holy Spirit. He never left the bosom of the Trinity. But at the same time He was also present with us spatially and temporally through the incarnation and dwelt among us. Our spatial and temporal limits do not apply to deity. What the Godhead is and does is not comparable to what we as humans do who have a beginning and an end. It is true that we will live forever in the Kingdom of Heaven but now we experience the fundamental state of the limit and which limit is abolished by the Resurrection of the Lord. The resurrection is the only one who frees us from the limits of birth and death.

The Resurrection and Ascension of the Lord are extraordinary says St. Bede the Venerable because they open the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven for the humanity. They open to us again the perspective of eternity. To open our humanity to eternity the Son of God needed to be rooted in temporality as man, to be rooted in our humanity so that it could be directed to eternity.”

Speaking about the role of Christ the Redeemer, the hierarch said: "Beyond the way God works through His size, power and acting that exceeds our powers and capacity to understand and comprehend, His way of acting in history is harmonious and in accordance with our fundamental way to be and to act. Without our humanity being anchored in God to be brought into the light of eternity, it could not be brought close to God. As man was created for Paradise and the Kingdom of Heaven, he had to be brought back, raised, to this deified state. There were prophets, kings, emperors, righteous, patriarchs, judges, but none could bring this humanity by its own power to this level of deification and to the reality of meeting God. The only solution was for God Himself through His Son to descend into history, become incarnate, clothe Himself and unite in an incomprehensible way with our humanity.

The 4th Ecumenical Council talks about the way in which the union between the divine and the human nature in Christ took place, but these are words that do not fully explain the depth of the mystery. They define or circumscribe the way in which the Holy Fathers of the 4th Ecumenical Council understand that this mystery happened. In its depth no one will be able to fully express this unfathomable mystery.

Clothing in our humanity and transfiguring it from the inside through uncreated energies, of the grace that springs from His divine person, Christ further shows the disciples through healings, through the word with great power, through resurrections during His lifetime that here in front of them is present the Son of God, the Prophet, the promised Messiah promised from the ancient times.

Here history reaches the point where God considers that the time is fulfilled for the sending of His Son to raise humanity from its fall to the level to which it had been destined by vocation from eternity.

Christ after the resurrection remained with the disciples for 40 days appearing to them to prove that His prophetic words before death were true and with this transfigured body after death but real. He will ascend to heaven and sit on the throne of glory."

Next, HG Bishop Ioan Casian emphasized why this celebration is important:

"Why is this celebration important? Because man's first thought at the word separation, ascension, departure is sadness because separation means an absence. Or Christ the Redeemer says that precisely this ‘absence’ by rising to heaven ensures His presence in the bosom of our humanity. Because only this ascension to the heavens with the body will allow the sending of the Holy Spirit who will make real the presence of God's work in the world to establish the Church and rebuild man. So, Christ's bodily ascension to heaven is only a stage that we humans must live with joy and with great gratitude. Because if we exist today as a Church and can perform the Divine Liturgy by consecrating the bread and wine as gifts of the faithful in the Body and Blood of the Lord, this is done only because Christ the Savior ascended to heaven bodily. That is why this celebration is a celebration of joy, of transfiguration, of light. Our humanity had suffered so much through the fall. It was taken from the Virgin Mary by the Savior and transfigured during His life by union with the divine nature and raised to the heavens and raised to the throne of glory and in this way reassured the perspective of eternal life because this is what the Church is about. "

The hierarch concluded the homily by saying: "The Feast of the Ascension of the Lord is a celebration of the dignity of our humanity that has been elevated again to God.

It is also the moment when we remember the heroes of the Romanian nation who suffered on the battlefields in different moments of our nation's history so that we can exist today as a nation and as a country, and that we too can enjoy the freedom and the life we live today. That is why we are grateful to them, that is why we commemorated them today and where there are monuments erected in their honor, the clergy and the faithful go to pray for the rest of their souls in God and to remember them and bring them gratitude for their sacrifice. "

At the end, the hierarch blessed those present.