In the “farewell discourse” of St John’s Gospel, chapters 14-16, Christ prepares his disciples for his departure. In fact there is some deliberate ambivalence here: his initial departure will be his death by crucifixion, but just as Jesus speaks of his being “lifted up” to refer simultaneously to his death and his heavenly exaltation, so his departure in the farewell discourse can mean his Crucifixion and his Ascension. But is the Ascension really a departure?
Certainly it marks the end of the presence of his resurrection body as the tangible, visibly recognisable, crucified-and-risen Jesus in the form familiar to his disciples. But the Ascension is certainly not the end of Christ’s presence in the world. I think that St Paul and all of the evangelists, in their different ways, want us to understand that, because of the Resurrection, Jesus is able for the rest of human history to be more present in the world now than when he walked the fields of Galilee or the streets of Jerusalem.
