A patristic reading of the three foundational texts: Luke 24, Acts 1, and Ephesians 4
Forty days after the Resurrection, Christ leads His disciples out of the city toward Bethany, lifts His hands, blesses them — and while He blessed them, writes Saint Luke, “He parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51). Three lines. The rest of the Gospel is silent.
And yet, the disciples do not return broken-hearted. They return “with great joy” (Luke 24:52). They had every reason to weep — and the hymnography of the feast indeed shows them grieving — but Luke notes something paradoxical: they return with joy. And Saint John Chrysostom, preaching this feast in Antioch at the end of the fourth century, opens with a question that would be taken up more than a millennium and a half later by Elder Cleopa in Romanian: are we to call this a feast of joy or a feast of mourning?
The Ascension is, like the Resurrection, one of the twelve Great Feasts of the liturgical year — and yet one of the least commented upon. The Fathers of the Church have left relatively few homilies dedicated directly to this feast, compared to those consecrated to the Resurrection or the Nativity. The reason is not indifference. The Ascension cannot be celebrated autonomously: it is the conclusion of the economy of salvation and the premise of Pentecost. It looks back, toward all that Christ accomplished on earth — and forward, toward the descent of the Spirit and His coming in glory.
This article reads the feast as the Fathers read it — through the three foundational texts that establish it theologically: Luke 24:50-53 (the blessing and the worship), Acts 1:1-11 (the cloud, the angels, the promise), and Ephesians 4:7-13 (Christ’s descent and ascent). Three texts, one mystery: Christ departs in the flesh and remains in the Spirit. Our nature ascends to the throne, and the earth is not abandoned.
We will move through Saint Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on Luke), Saint John Chrysostom (Homily 1 on Acts, Homily 11 on Ephesians, In Ascensionem Christi — CPG 4342), Saint Gregory of Nyssa (In Ascensionem Christi — CPG 3178), Saint Leo the Great (Sermons 73-74), Saint Maximus the Confessor, and Saint Gregory Palamas (Homily 21) — and we will conclude with the iconographic reading of the feast and the spiritual implication of the Ascension in the life of each Christian.
1. The Three Texts: An Entire Theology of the Ascension
Before exegesis, let us lay out the texts.
Luke 24:50-53 closes the Gospel: “And He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His hands He blessed them. While He blessed them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they were continually in the temple praising and blessing God.”
Acts 1:1-11 takes up the event from the other end — as a beginning. The same evangelical hand (Luke), but with different accents: the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, the disciples’ question about the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, the promise of the Spirit, the ascension on a cloud, the two angels in white garments who announce the Second Coming.
Ephesians 4:7-13 does not narrate, but interprets: “Therefore He says: ‘When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.’ Now this, ‘He ascended’ — what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.”
The three texts together form the dogmatic and exegetical axis of the feast: narrative (Luke-Acts) — interpretation (Paul) — recapitulation (the Fathers).
In the hymnography of the feast, the three texts are already interwoven. The Troparion of the Ascension formulates the meaning concisely:
You ascended in glory, O Christ our God, granting joy to Your disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit. Through the blessing they were assured that You are the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world.
The Kontakion, transmitted in the service of the feast and traditionally connected with the great hymnography of the age of Romanos the Melodist (sixth century), says:
When You had fulfilled the dispensation for our sake, and united things on earth with things in heaven, You ascended in glory, O Christ our God, in no way distant, but remaining inseparable, You cry to those who love You: I am with you, and no one is against you!
Both liturgical texts rest explicitly on Luke-Acts (the blessing, the promise of the Spirit, the ascension in glory) and on Ephesians (things on earth and things in heaven). The Orthodox hymnography of the Ascension is, in essence, a liturgical commentary on the three texts.
2. Luke 24:50-53: The Blessing, the Parting, the Worship
Saint Cyril of Alexandria comments on this passage in the final homilies of his Commentary on Luke (Homilies 154-156, fragmentary in manuscript). For Cyril, the gesture of blessing has a meaning that must not be missed: Christ does not abandon the world, nor does He turn His back on it. “While He blessed them” — that is, while He was performing the final priestly act for His newly-founded Church — He parts from them. The blessing continues across the parting. This is, for Cyril, the high-priestly gesture of Christ, who from the moment of the Ascension remains forever “to make intercession for us” (Hebrews 7:25).
Saint John Chrysostom interprets in the same direction. In his Homily on the Ascension (CPG 4342, edited in SC 562 according to a critically analyzed manuscript tradition), he explains the Lukan passage in light of Acts 1 — because, for the Antiochene exegete, the two chapters are a single history told in two registers. The parting of the disciples from the Lord produces grief, but the angel comes to soothe it with the promise of return.
And the disciples’ return with joy to Jerusalem (Luke 24:52) is for Cyril the sign that the priestly blessing was received — not merely given. They do not flee, do not hide, but go up to the temple and worship. Here, exegetically, is the beginning of the Church as a praying community: the gathering of the disciples around the Mother of God, in fasting and prayer, until the descent of the Holy Spirit. The ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost are not an empty interval, but the first liturgical fast of the Church.
There is an important patristic observation here: Luke writes in two registers. In the Gospel, the accent falls on liturgy (blessing, worship, temple, praising God). In Acts, the accent falls on mission (witnesses, to the ends of the earth, the promise of the Spirit). The Ascension looks in two directions: inward (the Church’s worship) and outward (preaching to the world). Cyril of Alexandria and Chrysostom respect this duality; they do not reduce the Ascension to either aspect alone.
3. Acts 1:1-11: Saint John Chrysostom and the Homily In Ascensionem Christi
Here we enter the exegetical heart of the feast. John Chrysostom delivered Homily 1 on Acts (PG 60) in the context of the paschal liturgical reading of the Book of Acts — as was customary in fourth-century Antioch. For Chrysostom, there is a pedagogical reason in the structure of Luke’s work: “the former treatise” (Acts 1:1) — the Gospel — has spoken of all that “Jesus began to do and to teach”; and the verb began implies a continuation. Acts is the continuation of Christ’s work, through the Holy Spirit, in the Church.
“For this reason the Spirit did not come immediately after the Ascension of Christ, but after eight or nine days” — Chrysostom observes — so that the disciples should not think that the Spirit comes in place of Christ, but as the One promised by Christ.
But In Ascensionem Christi (CPG 4342, preserved in SC 562) is, in content, much richer. Chrysostom delivered it in Antioch, between 386 and 397, at a Christian cemetery on the outskirts of the city where martyrs were buried. The very place of its delivery is a living exegesis of the feast: the bodies of the saints await resurrection, while Christ ascended bodily into heaven. The tomb of the martyrs and the Ascension of Christ gaze toward one another.
The central theme of the homily is reconciliation. Chrysostom asks:
“What, then, is the feast of today? It is great and high, beloved, beyond the human mind, and worthy of the magnanimity of the One who made it. For today reconciliation has been made between God and the human race; today the ancient enmity has been abolished and the long war ended; today a wondrous peace has returned, which before was unthinkable.”
And further, the formulation that has marked the entire Eastern tradition:
“Today the angels received what they had long desired; today the archangels saw what they had long desired: our nature shining from the royal throne, clothed in glory and immortal beauty.”
For Chrysostom, human nature itself ascends to the throne. Not just any body, not a phantom, not a hypostasis detached from us — but the same nature that the angels guarded at the gates of Paradise after Adam’s fall. “The same nature that heard ‘dust you are, and to dust you shall return’ — today the Father says to it: ‘Sit at My right hand.’”
Then comes what is, exegetically, the key to Chrysostom’s entire theology of the Ascension — the **doctrine of the firstfruits (ἀπαρχή, aparchē)**:
“Just as it is customary in the fields of grain, when a few ears are taken, gathered into a small sheaf, and offered to God, who blesses the entire field for this small part — so Christ has done. Through this one body and firstfruits of the beginning, He has caused the whole human race to be blessed.”
Saint Paul uses the same Greek word — aparchē (firstfruits) — for the risen Christ (1 Cor 15:20, 23): “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Chrysostom unifies the Resurrection and the Ascension into a single movement: Christ risen and ascended is the firstfruits of our nature. This is the theology that Saint Gregory Palamas will take up, a millennium later, in Homily 21 — a text to which we will return.
Chrysostom then makes an exegetical observation often missed by popular preaching: why did the angels stand beside the disciples, when they could see for themselves how Christ was ascending? “Did the disciples not have eyes? Did they not see what was happening?” His answer goes in two directions.
First, for the disciples’ grief. They had grief in their hearts because of the parting — and the angel came to soothe their grief with the hope of return: “This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner” (Acts 1:11). As Chrysostom says: “so that the disciples should not do as Elisha did, who, seeing his master taken up to heaven, tore his garment, because he had no one beside him to tell him that Elijah would return.”
The second reason is more subtle: the distance was great, and the power of the human eye could not follow the body ascending into the heavens. Just as a bird, the higher it rises, becomes the more invisible — so it happened with the Lord’s body. And the angels stood as authenticating witnesses: “lest the disciples should think that He ascended in the same way Elijah did,” the servant, but on the cloud of the Master. Elijah ascended in a chariot of fire because he was sent as a servant. Christ ascended on a cloud, because the cloud is the throne of the Father (Isaiah 19:1).
This is pure typological exegesis, in the Antiochene tradition: the parallel and the difference between Elijah and Christ. Elijah left behind his mantle for Elisha. Christ left to His disciples the gifts of grace — and not a single prophet like Elisha, but thousands, “prophets far greater and more luminous” than Elisha.
4. Ephesians 4:7-13: Chrysostom on the Descent and the Ascent
Saint Paul makes in Ephesians 4:8-10 an interpretation of Psalm 67:18 LXX (“When You ascended on high, You led captivity captive; You received gifts among men”) applying it to the ascended Christ. Here Saint John Chrysostom intervenes with Homily 11 on Ephesians. And he does so with unequaled clarity.
“When you hear these words, do not think of a mere movement from one place to another; for the very same thing that Paul establishes in the Epistle to the Philippians — the kenosis — that he also argues here.”
Chrysostom explicitly links Ephesians 4:9 (“He descended into the lower parts of the earth”) with Philippians 2:5-8 (the kenosis, the self-emptying of Christ unto death on the cross, even the death of the cross). “The lower parts of the earth” is not an abstract cosmological coordinate — it is the depth of God’s descent into our nature. The descent includes the Incarnation, the Passion, the death, the descent into Hades. And the ascent (the Ascension) concludes them all.
Chrysostom then reads the key verse 4:8: “You received gifts among men” / “He gave gifts to men.” The LXX Psalm says “He received,” Paul says “He gave.” How does Chrysostom explain this apparent inversion?
“It is one and the same. Why does Paul boast? Everything is God’s. The prophet says that ‘You received gifts among men’ — the Apostle says that ‘He gave gifts to men.’ This means: we have no right to boast, for our nature, which has been raised on high, received gifts for us, not for itself.”
Chrysostom thus reads the verse with a double key: what Christ takes with His ascended nature — He receives for all; what He gives, He gives entirely for all. More precisely: the human nature assumed in Christ receives the gifts of the Spirit in the Ascension; and through Pentecost, these gifts are poured out upon the members of the Church.
Here Chrysostom prefigures what would become — a thousand years later — the Palamite articulation of natures and energies: the human nature of Christ, ascended in glory, becomes a channel through which divine energies are poured out toward us. The Ascension is not the end, but the beginning of the outpouring.
And the Pauline list of ministries in Ephesians 4:11 — “apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers” — becomes, in Chrysostom’s reading, the direct consequence of the Ascension: the ascended Christ, as Chief Shepherd, organizes the Church. This is a remarkable thesis: the hierarchical structure of the Church is the gift of the Ascension. Not a late administrative organization, not a historical adaptation — but the concrete gift of the ascended Christ.
5. Three Patristic Keys to the Feast
We can now synthesize, through three patristic formulations, what the Ascension theologically means.
a) The Firstfruits of Our Nature (John Chrysostom)
For Chrysostom, the Ascension means that human nature is seated on the throne of God. Not a substitute, not a fancy, not a rhetorical concession — the nature itself. And this nature is the firstfruits — the part which, sanctified, sanctifies the whole. The entire human race is, through the ascended Christ, predestined to glory. This is the patristic foundation of the theology of deification (theosis): because human nature has ascended in Christ to the Father’s throne, every human being united with Christ through baptism, the Eucharist, and life in the Spirit can ascend, by grace, into glory.
b) The Union of Things Above with Things Below (the Kontakion, Leo the Great)
The Kontakion of the feast says: “uniting things on earth with things in heaven.” The same formulation appears in Saint Leo the Great, Sermo 73:
“And truly great and unspeakable was their cause for joy, when in the sight of the holy multitude, above the dignity of all heavenly creatures, the nature of humanity went up, to pass above the ranks of angels and to be raised beyond the heights of archangels, without its ascent being limited by any height, until, received to sit with the eternal Father, it was associated on the throne of the One with whose Nature it was united in the Son.”
Leo repeats almost word for word the Chrysostomic thesis. The Ascension is the movement by which the human nature assumed by the Son is received into the glory of the Trinity — without confusion of natures, but in the hypostatic union of the incarnate Word. “The Ascension of Christ is our ascension” — Leo affirms — and the hope of the Body is raised where the glory of the Head has gone.
This is the formulation that the liturgist could hardly say more exactly than the brief phrase of the Kontakion: “uniting things on earth with things in heaven.” The Ascension is union, not separation. And for this reason, in the same Kontakion, Christ says to His disciples: “I am with you, and no one is against you.” The Ascension is not absence, but a new form of presence.
c) The Drawing Up of Our Nature Through All Heights (Gregory Palamas)
Saint Gregory Palamas, in Homily 21 (the First Homily on the Ascension), takes up the Chrysostomic thesis but pushes it in a typically hesychastic direction: the biblical ascents before Christ are temporary liftings that do not cross the boundaries of the earth. Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire, but did not pass beyond the regions surrounding the earth. Habakkuk was lifted by an angel and carried from Judea to Babylon, above the lions’ den of Daniel (Daniel 14:33-39 LXX / Bel and the Dragon), but only for a short time. Only Christ passed through all the heavens (Hebrews 4:14).
“Today we celebrate the passing of our nature in Christ, not only from the subterranean regions to the earth, but from the earth to the heaven of heavens and to the throne above the heavens.”
The Ascension, for Palamas, is eschatological — it prefigures not only the final state of humanity in the age to come, but the capacity of our nature, assumed in Christ, to be drawn by grace into the uncreated glory. This is, at its core, the Palamite theology of deification: human nature can ascend through the uncreated energies of God — because in Christ it has already ascended.
For Palamas, one expression synthesizes everything:
“Neither an angel nor a man, but the Incarnate Lord Himself came and saved us, becoming like us for our sake, remaining unchanged as God. In the same way as He descended, without changing His place, but coming down to us, so He returns once again, without moving as God, but placing on the heights the human nature He had assumed.”
The place of God is everywhere. The movement in the Ascension is not cosmological, but eschatological — the seating of our nature in glory.
6. Saint Gregory of Nyssa: Psalms 22 and 23 LXX as the Ladder of the Ascension
The homily In Ascensionem Christi transmitted under the name of Saint Gregory of Nyssa (CPG 3178), treated in recent scholarship as an ascensional discourse, is, in its structure, a small exegetical jewel. Unlike Chrysostom who builds on reconciliation and firstfruits, Gregory of Nyssa builds on Psalms 22 and 23 LXX (corresponding to 23 and 24 in the Masoretic/English numbering).
Gregory takes as his starting point a liturgical detail: the Old Testament psalms read at the service of the Ascension. “David, the prophet with the harp,” becomes for Gregory a pedagogue of the faithful — he is the one who, in the Holy Spirit, prefigured the Ascension many centuries beforehand.
Psalm 22 LXX (“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want”) is, in Gregory’s reading, the program of the sacramental life: the good shepherd, the waters of rest (Baptism), the table prepared in the presence of enemies (the Eucharist), the anointing with oil (Chrismation). The five verses become, in Gregory’s eyes, an entire liturgy of initiation. Before a Christian can ascend, he must be baptized, chrismated, fed with the Eucharist. This is the foundation of the ascent.
Psalm 23 LXX (“The earth is the Lord’s, and its fullness”) then becomes the ascent proper. Verses 3-4 — “Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart” — are, for Gregory, the conditions of the ascent toward the Ascension. He who would ascend with Christ must have hands clean from sins and a heart purified of passions. This is not a supplementary demand, but the nature of salvation: Christ does not drag human nature behind Him by force, but raises it together with the free will of man.
Then come verses 7-10 of Psalm 23 LXX: “Lift up your gates, O rulers! And be lifted up, O eternal gates! And the King of glory shall enter!” Gregory of Nyssa reads this dialogue as the angelic dialogue at the Ascension: the earthly angels (who accompany the assumed human nature) ask those of heaven to open the gates. And the heavenly angels, seeing human nature ascending in the mandorla of glory, ask in wonder: “Who is this King of glory?” The answer: “The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.”
This is a typical patristic exegesis — dramatic, dialogical, liturgical. Gregory does not read the psalm as an archaeological document, but as a liturgical scenario of the Ascension. And Byzantine hymnography has taken up this reading: in many stichera of the Ascension, the dialogue of the angels is reproduced almost verbatim.
At the end of the homily, Gregory of Nyssa pronounces a formulation that has become famous:
The Ascension of the Lord is “the consummation and fulfillment of all other feasts, and the blessed conclusion of the earthly sojourn of Jesus Christ.”
For Gregory, the Ascension is not a feast among others, but the summit of all: the Nativity, the Baptism, the Transfiguration, the Passion, the Resurrection — all find their fulfillment in the Ascension.
7. “A Feast of Joy or of Mourning?” — Chrysostom’s Question and Elder Cleopa’s Answer
Saint John Chrysostom, in his homily on the Ascension, touches on the affective problem of the disciples:
“How could the disciples not have grieved to see the Savior, the teacher, the guardian, the lover of mankind, the gentle and good one, parting from them? How could they not have felt pain?”
This question is taken up — without Elder Cleopa necessarily having had access to SC 562, but through the living tradition of the Church — in Elder Cleopa’s well-known sermon on the Ascension:
“This feast now, of the Ascension of the Lord, I do not know, my beloved listeners, whether to call it a feast of joy or of mourning. I would call it a feast of joy, but I see the Holy Apostles weeping and grieving […]. I would call it a feast of mourning, but I see these same Holy Apostles rejoicing, as today’s troparion shows us.”
The stichera of the Vespers of the Ascension confirm the same hymnographic paradox:
“Lord, when the Apostles saw You being lifted up on the clouds, O Christ the Giver of life, they were filled with grief, weeping with bitter tears, and said: Master, do not leave us orphans.”
And yet, the troparion answers: “granting joy to Your disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit.” The typically Orthodox response is joy-in-sorrow, charmolypē — joy mingled with sorrow, a sorrow that is transfigured into joy. The grief is real — the bodily separation is a loss. But the joy is more real, because the form of presence that follows (the Holy Spirit) is interiorized: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
The disciples do not remain orphans. They enter, through the Ascension, into a new stage of relationship with Christ: relationship through the Spirit, in the Church. Chrysostom formulates it magnificently:
“When Christ was born in the flesh and [the angels] saw that He was reconciled with men — for He would not have made such a descent if there had not been a reconciliation — then they made a dance on earth, crying out and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill among men.’”
The two angels who appear at the Ascension are — Chrysostom observes — the same angels of the annunciations. They stood at the Nativity, they stood at the Resurrection, they stand at the Ascension. They are the angels who celebrate the turning points of the divine economy.
8. The Hymnography of the Ascension: The Kontakion and Its Theological Structure
Byzantine hymnography of the feast is built on a compositional tradition that, in the sixth century, reaches its highest point with Romanos the Melodist (originally from Emesa/Homs). The kontakia of that age are, in their original form, sung poetic sermons, made up of a prooimion (prelude) and 18-30 strophes (oikoi) united by an acrostic and sealed by a refrain. Of the vast output of that age, today only the prelude of each kontakion has been preserved in Byzantine services — what we now call the “kontakion” of the feast. The remaining oikoi were gradually replaced in liturgical use as the canon (the form developed by Saint John of Damascus and Saint Andrew of Crete) became the dominant hymnographic form.
The Kontakion of the Ascension, in its present liturgical form, is the prelude of a kontakion transmitted from this tradition. This prelude sums up in four lines the entire theology of the feast:
“When You had fulfilled the dispensation for our sake, / and united things on earth with things in heaven, / You ascended in glory, O Christ our God, / in no way distant, but remaining inseparable, / You cry to those who love You: / I am with you, and no one is against you!”
Each phrase is theologically dense:
“When You had fulfilled the dispensation for our sake” — the economy (οἰκονομία). A technical patristic term: God’s plan for the salvation of mankind. The Ascension is the fulfillment of this plan, the conclusion of the earthly mission of the Incarnate Word.
“Uniting things on earth with things in heaven” — a direct citation of the Pauline theology of Ephesians 1:10: “with a view to the economy of the fullness of the times, to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.” Romanos translates the concept into hymnographic language.
“In no way distant” — the affirmation of divine omnipresence. Christ, as God, is everywhere; the movement of the Ascension is in His human nature, not in His divine nature. This is the Chalcedonian formulation (451) in liturgical language.
“I am with you, and no one is against you” — a weaving together of Matthew 28:20 and Romans 8:31. The Ascension is not absence, but a new form of presence — in the Spirit, in the Holy Mysteries, in the Church.
The four verses of the Kontakion thus integrate the fundamental dogmatic elements of the feast: Christology (the two natures), ecclesiology, pneumatology, eschatology. Father Dumitru Stăniloae said that “the liturgy is theology lived.” Whoever wishes to know the Orthodox theology of the Ascension must consciously chant the service of the feast.
9. The Iconography of the Ascension: A Theological Reading
The iconography of the feast — fixed in the Eastern Church as early as the sixth century (the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, AD 586) — is one of the densest compositions in the tradition. Its structure is invariable, regardless of school (Sinaite, Palaeologan, Novgorodian, Athonite, Romanian):
Above: Christ ascending in a mandorla (the concentric circles of divine glory), raising His right hand in blessing, holding in His left a scroll (the scroll of teaching). Two angels lift the mandorla in liturgical reverence.
Below: The Mother of God, at the center, frontal, with hands raised in the gesture of an orant (in prayer). On either side of her, two young angels in white garments — the angels “men in white apparel” of Acts 1:10. The twelve Apostles, arranged in a half-circle, in dynamic postures — looking up, marveling, weeping, comforting one another.
What does this composition teach us?
First observation — the Mother of God. Acts 1:14 shows her in the apostolic gathering after the Ascension, alongside the disciples, “continuing with one accord in prayer.” The icon places her at the center of the composition of the feast in order to show the mystery of the praying Church. The Apostles are agitated, looking up, gesticulating. The Mother of God is still, at the center, frontal, calm. She is the axis of the composition. As Leonid Ouspensky says: “the strict immobility of the Mother of God emphasizes the immutability of the truth revealed by God, of which the Church is the guardian.”
Second observation — the Apostles. If you count, there are twelve. But at the Ascension, there were not twelve: Judas had died, Matthias had not yet been chosen by lot (Acts 1:26), Paul had not yet been converted. And yet: in many representations, the iconographer places twelve Apostles, and sometimes we see Peter and Paul in privileged positions next to the Mother of God. Why? The answer is theological, not historical. The icon is not a photograph, but a dogmatic confession. The Twelve represent the apostolic plenitude of the Church, not the chronological exact number of those present on the Mount of Olives. Paul appears next to Peter because theologically he is part of the apostolic college. The icon confesses ecclesiology; it does not report through a photographic lens.
Third observation — the angels. The two young angels in white, pointing with their hands toward heaven and addressing the Apostles: they are the voice of Scripture in the icon. Their word — “This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner” (Acts 1:11) — is the eschatological program of the Church: the expectation of the Parousia. For this reason, in many icons, the angels hold scrolls on which this verse is inscribed. The Ascension looks forward, not backward. The Mother of God and the Apostles are the Church awaiting the Second Coming.
Fourth observation — the Mount of Olives. The few stylized stones and the olive trees that “bow” toward Christ — an allusion to Acts 1:12 (the Mount of Olives) and to the prophecy of Zechariah 14:4 (“His feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives”). The liturgical and exegetical tradition has often connected the Mount of Olives of the Ascension with Zechariah’s prophecy about the day of the Lord’s coming — and the iconographer brings together, in the same composition, the place of the Ascension and the place of the eschatological return.
Fifth observation — the mandorla. The mandorla is not a decorative ornament but the iconographic sign of divine glory, of the uncreated light in which Christ appears and in which His human nature is glorified. Read in light of Palamite theology, it points to the participation of man in God through grace, not through essence. The light of the mandorla is the light of Tabor, the light of the Resurrection, the uncreated light — into which Christ ascends, into which those who will be saved shall enter.
The iconography of the Ascension is, in this sense, one of the most polyphonic icons of Orthodox tradition. It unites the Gospel narrative, eschatology (the Second Coming), ecclesiology (the Church around the Mother of God), pneumatology (the expectation of the Spirit), and the mysticism of uncreated light (the mandorla) — all in a single image.
10. The Ascension of the Lord and Our Ascension: Saint Maximus the Confessor and the Spiritual Ascent
Saint Maximus the Confessor does not leave a homily proper on the Ascension. But his entire theology — in the Ambigua, in the Questions to Thalassius, in the Interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer — is a reading of the economy of salvation as recapitulation (anakephalaiosis) in Christ. The Ascension, for Maximus, is the beginning of the movement of the return of the world to God through the human nature assumed by Christ.
In the Mystagogia, Maximus shows how the liturgy itself is an icon of the Ascension: the Great Entrance, the procession with the Holy Gifts, the entry into the Holy of Holies — all are a reflection of the ascent of Christ with our nature into glory. The Eucharistic anaphora is, literally, “ascension” — anaphora means “a bringing up.”
But more profoundly: the Ascension of the Lord inaugurates the spiritual ascent of every Christian. In the Centuries on Love (Philokalia, vol. II, in the Romanian translation of Father Stăniloae), Saint Maximus describes an ascent that begins with faith and ends with love. The intermediate steps are: the fear of God, self-control, patient endurance, hope, dispassion, love. This ladder ascends, hypothetically, all the way to the glory of the ascended Christ. It is not a metaphor but an ontological reality: he who ascends spiritually ascends in the ascended Christ, in His nature itself, raised in glory.
Saint Gregory Palamas specifies in more detail: the two dimensions of the Ascension are the bodily ascension of Christ and the spiritual ascension of man through grace. For those who purify themselves, are illumined, and are perfected in Christ, the Ascension is not a past event — it is the program of their life. “And He will lift us up also”; “and we too shall ascend, not bodily, but in the Spirit, through the uncreated energies.”
This is, at its core, hesychasm: the life of prayer which, beginning from repentance and culminating in the vision of uncreated light, is an anticipated participation in the Ascension. Ascetics, saints, martyrs — they are those who ascend already from this life toward the place where our nature has already been seated in Christ.
And for most of us, who are neither ascetics nor martyrs, the Ascension of the Lord is the foundation of hope. The firstfruits have ascended. That which belongs to our nature, in Christ, is already in glory. We are not orphans. Nor do we remain captive on earth.
11. The Forty Days Between Resurrection and Ascension
One final exegetical matter worth raising: why forty days?
Acts 1:3 says that Christ “presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days.” Forty days is, in the divine economy, a symbolic interval:
- Forty days Moses spends on Sinai (Exodus 24:18).
- Forty days Elijah fasts unto Horeb (1 Kings 19:8).
- Forty days Christ fasts in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2).
- Forty days the risen Christ shows Himself to the disciples.
Saint Leo the Great says, in Sermon 73:
“Those days, beloved, which elapsed between the Lord’s Resurrection and His Ascension did not pass in a useless idleness, but in them great mysteries were confirmed, deep truths revealed. In them the fear of death was banished, the immortality not only of the soul but also of the body was made known. In them, through the breathing of the Lord, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon all the Apostles.”
The forty days are, according to patristic tradition, the apostolic catechumenate — the period in which the risen Christ completes the teaching given to the disciples, reveals to them the mysteries of the Kingdom, gives them the breathing of the Spirit in advance (John 20:22), prepares them for mission. It is not a delay but a pedagogy: the disciples were not prepared to receive the Spirit without this final apostolic catechesis.
And here Chrysostom makes an important observation in Homily 1 on Acts: the Holy Spirit did not come immediately after the Ascension, but after a brief interval — the ten days of waiting until Pentecost. Why? So that the disciples would not confuse the presence of the Spirit with the presence of Christ. They had to feel the absence, in order to receive Pentecost with full awareness of the gift.
12. The Ascension of the Lord in Living Orthodox Experience
Contemporary Romanian Fathers — in the ongoing continuity of the patristic tradition — have emphasized two aspects of the feast worth recalling.
Elder Cleopa, in his sermons on the Ascension, insists on the moral dimension: if Christ ascended, “let us cause our minds to think on things above, to seek the things above” (Colossians 3:1-2). The Ascension is, for Elder Cleopa, an anthropological vocation: man is created to ascend; the Fall means remaining below; salvation means the ascent.
This is, moreover, the patristic answer to the apparent difficulty of the feast: Christ departs, but comes in another mode — a mode which is, for each Christian individually, a greater closeness through the Holy Spirit. “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you” (John 16:7).
13. The Holy Emperors Constantine and Helena: The Convergence of May 21, 2026
In the year 2026, the feast of the Ascension falls on May 21 — the same day on which the Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Emperors Constantine the Great and his mother Helena. The calendar coincidence, far from being accidental, opens a profound theological reading: the Ascension of the Lord — the mystery of human nature seated on the throne of glory — is celebrated together with the two saints whom the hymnography of the Church names “equal to the apostles” (ισαπόστολοι, isapóstoloi).
“Equal to the Apostles”
The title isapóstolos is not honorific. It is a precise hagiographic category: persons who, without being among the Twelve, accomplished a missionary work comparable to that of the apostles. Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Ananias of the Seventy, Saint Thekla, Saint Nina, Saint Cosmas the Aetolian, Saint Nicholas of Japan — all bear this epithet. And Constantine and Helena are the first emperors placed liturgically alongside the apostles, because their work opened the preaching of the Gospel to the entire world.
For Constantine, the sign was the Cross seen in the sky before the battle of the Milvian Bridge (October 28, 312), followed by the Edict of Milan (313), through which Christianity ceased to be persecuted. For Helena, the sign was the discovery of the Holy Cross at Jerusalem (in 326), as a result of the excavations she undertook at the holy places. The two works are complementary: the emperor sets up the Cross over the empire; his mother brings the Cross out of the earth and sets it before the world.
Saint Helena and the Place of the Ascension
There is a concrete historical connection, little known, between Saint Helena and today’s feast: one of the first great Christian foundations on the Mount of Olives, the Eleona, was raised in the Constantinian era (c. 326-333) and connected by tradition with the memory of the Lord’s Ascension. The historian Eusebius of Caesarea, a contemporary of the events, witnesses in his Life of Constantine (III, 41-43) that the empress-mother raised there a holy place in memory of the Savior’s ascent to heaven. Eleona was built over a cave associated by tradition with the place where Christ spoke to His disciples of the last times (Mark 13:3) and taught them the “Our Father” prayer.
The actual place of the Ascension, called Imbomon (“on the ridge”), located a short distance higher up on the summit, received a distinct church later, c. 378-390, founded by a Roman noblewoman named Poemenia. The pilgrim Egeria, who visited Jerusalem at the end of the fourth century, describes the liturgical procession that ascended from Eleona to Imbomon — a sign that two distinct places were venerated, and that the entire area of the Mount of Olives was dedicated to the memory of the Ascension.
Saint Helena is, in this sense, one of the hands through which the memory of the holy places was visibly set in the liturgical geography of the Church. Her foundation on the Mount of Olives — alongside the Basilica of the Nativity at Bethlehem and that of the Holy Sepulchre at Golgotha — opened the way to the public and systematic veneration of the Great Feasts.
Constantine and the Mystery of the Cross: Connection with the Ascension
There is also a theological connection between Constantine and the Ascension. The hymnography of the feast emphasizes that Christ ascended bodily, carrying with Him the marks of the Passion — the prints of the nails, the trace of the spear. He who sits on the throne of glory is Christ crucified and risen. The Cross does not remain behind, but ascends with Him who was crucified upon it.
And the Cross discovered by Helena and publicly venerated in the Church is not separated from the glory of the Ascension: He who sits at the right hand of the Father is Christ crucified and risen, bearing in His body the marks of victory. The feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14) — instituted to commemorate Helena’s discovery and the public elevation of the Cross by Patriarch Macarius of Jerusalem before the multitude — is, in Orthodox liturgical logic, the companion-feast of the Ascension of the Lord. Christ ascended with His victorious body; His Cross was raised over the world through the work of Saint Helena.
The two works — the Ascension of the Lord and the elevation of the Cross through Constantine and Helena — form a single movement: the raising of human nature into glory, through the Cross that made this raising possible.
The Convergence of 2026 as a Calling
For the Christian who today celebrates threefold — the Ascension of the Lord, the Holy Emperors Constantine and Helena, and Heroes’ Day (in Romania) — the coincidence is not an accidental aggregation of the calendar. It is a liturgical confirmation of a single patristic thesis:
Human nature is not abandoned. Christ has ascended with it to the throne. The Cross has been raised over the world. And those who have died for the faith and for their neighbor — apostles, emperors, saints, anonymous heroes — are seated together with the ascended Christ, through the firstfruits of His nature.
When we commemorate today Saint Constantine and Saint Helena, we commemorate those who made possible the public veneration of the Cross and of the Great Feasts; and when we commemorate the heroes, we commemorate those who united themselves with Christ’s sacrifice through their own. All three — emperors, heroes, faithful — gaze toward the same throne, where Christ awaits them with the assumed and exalted human nature.
14. “Christ is Risen!” or “Christ is Ascended!” — A Question of Romanian Believers
In Romanian parishes, in the days before and after the Ascension, a practical question often arises: with what greeting do we continue? Some continue to greet with “Christ is risen!” until Pentecost. Others switch from the day of the Ascension to “Christ is ascended! — Indeed, He is ascended!” And others consider this second formula theologically wrong. The faithful are, in short, divided into two camps. What does the ancient and comparative tradition teach us?
The Strict Liturgical Rule
In the order of the Pentecostarion, the paschal greeting “Christ is risen!” is rendered from the night of the Resurrection until the Apodosis (Leavetaking) of Pascha, which falls on the Wednesday of the sixth week after Pascha — the day before the Ascension. At the service of the Apodosis, the troparion “Christ is risen from the dead…” is sung for the last time of the year, along with the paschal canon and the paschal stichera. From the Ascension onward, the paschal chants cease liturgically.
This is the order observed unanimously in the Orthodox Church, across local traditions.
The Russian Tradition
In the Russian Church, the rule is very clear and strictly observed: the greeting “Khristos voskrese! — Voistinu voskrese!” is used for forty days, until the Apodosis of Pascha inclusive. At the Ascension, the paschal greeting “ceases to be used.” The ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost are in the Russian tradition a time of stillness and waiting, in which the faithful return to ordinary greetings.
Importantly: in the Russian language there is no parallel greeting “Khristos vozneslsia! — Voistinu vozneslsia!”. The form “Khristos vozneslsia” appears in texts and sermons as a theological affirmation (“Christ has ascended into heaven”), but is not used as a ritual formula of greeting between believers.
The Serbian Tradition
The Serbs are the only Orthodox who have developed a real popular greeting for another feast as well — the Nativity of the Lord: “Hristos se Rodi! — Vaistinu se Rodi!”. This usage has been alive for centuries in Serbian-speaking territory, comparable in strength to the paschal greeting.
For the Ascension, however, the Serbs follow the same pattern as the Russians. The greeting “Hristos vaskrse! — Vaistinu vaskrse!” is used until the Apodosis of Pascha, then ceases. There is no popular greeting “Hristos se vaznese!” or equivalent in Serbian. The ten days are quiet, without a special greeting.
The Greek and Athonite Tradition
On the Holy Mountain and in the Greek Churches, the rule is the same. “Christos Anesti!” — used strictly until the Apodosis of Pascha. Then it ceases. “Christos Anelifthi! — Alithos Anelifthi!” does not exist as a formula of greeting between believers. The enunciative form “Christos anelifthi” (Christ has ascended) appears in texts and sermons, but not as a social ritual of greeting.
Furthermore, the current greeting among Athonite monks, throughout the rest of the year, is not even “Christos Anesti” — it is “Evloghite! / O Kyrios!” (Bless! / The Lord blesses!). They use the paschal greeting strictly during the paschal period, according to the rule, after which they return to “Evloghite.”
Modern Romanian Practice
In light of these comparisons, the Romanian situation becomes clearer. “Christ is ascended!” is a modern Romanian custom, arising by analogy with the paschal greeting — a kind of popular “prolongation” of paschal liturgical life into the ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost. It has no precedent in the patristic, Athonite, Slavic, or Byzantine tradition.
This does not mean it is wrong. The proposition itself is perfectly Orthodox theologically — it affirms the reality of Christ’s Ascension. Whoever uses it does not err dogmatically. But neither does it rest on an ancient and universally recognized tradition.
How Do the Two Camps Sit?
Camp 1 — those who use “Christ is ascended!” between the Ascension and Pentecost: they do not err, but they follow a recent, local Romanian custom, not a patristic inheritance.
Camp 2 — those who criticize this formula and return to ordinary greetings after the Apodosis of Pascha: they are not “less Orthodox,” but rather, they follow the ancient universal practice of the East (Russian, Serbian, Greek, Athonite).
The theological argument sometimes invoked — “the Resurrection is the confession of an unseen event, the Ascension was seen by the apostles, so it does not need the same confessional formula” — has a real kernel of truth. The Resurrection has a unique soteriological force, because it affirms the foundation of faith (1 Cor 15:17). But the argument should not be absolutized: the Incarnation, the Baptism, and the Transfiguration were also seen, yet we confess them all in the Creed. The real asymmetry is more historical and liturgical than purely dogmatic: the living tradition of the Church has generated a single universal popular greeting — the paschal one — and has kept the other feasts in their proper register, without parallel greetings.
A Pastoral Proposal
Whoever wishes to follow the ancient, sure tradition, common to all Orthodoxy: greet with “Christ is risen!” until the Apodosis of Pascha (Wednesday, in the sixth week). From the Ascension, return to ordinary greetings, and keep the ten days until Pentecost in the stillness of expectation of the Holy Spirit.
Whoever uses “Christ is ascended!” does not err theologically, but it is well to know that this formula does not have the antiquity of a patristic tradition; it is a modern Romanian custom.
What is important is not to condemn one another’s practice. Saint Paul warns us against disputes over words (1 Tim 6:4; 2 Tim 2:14). The greeting is the expression of a reality, not the reality itself; and the Ascension of the Lord is, above any formula, the mystery we live together in the Church.
15. The Ascension and Heroes’ Day
The feast of the Ascension of the Lord in contemporary Romania is celebrated together with Heroes’ Day. The connection was established in Romania after the First World War, through Decree-Law no. 1693 of May 4, 1920, and was reconfirmed in post-communist legislation, including through Law no. 379/2003 regarding the regime of war graves and commemorative monuments. The coincidence is, exegetically, profound: human nature is seated in glory through the Lord’s Ascension, and those who gave their lives for faith and for their neighbor participate, through their sacrifice, in this glory. And Saint John Chrysostom himself delivered his homily on the Ascension at a cemetery of martyrs, near Antioch. The liturgical proximity between the commemoration of martyrs and the feast of the Ascension thus has an ancient root.
The Churches today commemorate those fallen “on the battlefields, in camps, in prisons, in captivity,” and the bones of those without known graves are commemorated as resting in the hope of the Resurrection. This is, in the language of Saint Paul, the hope that the “firstfruits” is in glory: those who have united themselves with Christ through Baptism and a virtuous life will share in the nature of Christ raised in glory.
16. Exegetical and Pastoral Recapitulation
Summing up the main patristic theses on the Ascension — as they emerge from the reading of Luke 24, Acts 1, and Ephesians 4:
a) Christ ascended bodily. This is no incidental detail, but the dogmatic core. The Resurrection without the Ascension would leave human nature only partially restored. The bodily Ascension confirms that our very material nature — not only the soul, not only an essence — is destined for glory. Saint Leo the Great: “not only of the soul, but also of the body” (Sermo 73).
b) The Ascension is the firstfruits of our nature. The ascended Christ = the human race represented, sanctified, seated at the right hand of the Father. Chrysostom: “through this one body and firstfruits of the beginning, He has caused the whole human race to be blessed.”
c) The Ascension unites heaven with earth. Romanos the Melodist: “uniting things on earth with things in heaven.” Not separation, but the irreversible union of the two worlds in the divine-human Person of Christ.
d) The Ascension is the premise of Pentecost. Chrysostom: “It is to your advantage that I go away.” Without the Ascension, no Pentecost; without Pentecost, no Church. The Ascension prepares the charismatic space of the Church.
e) Christ remains present. “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20) is no metaphor, but a new form of presence — presence through the Spirit, in the Church, in the Eucharist, in the Holy Mysteries.
f) The Ascension announces the Second Coming. The angels: “will so come in like manner” (Acts 1:11). The feast looks backward (the fulfillment of the economy) and forward (the Parousia).
g) The Ascension is our vocation. Palamas: our nature too can ascend, by grace, into glory. Maximus the Confessor: spiritual ascent is anticipated participation in the glory of the Ascension.
Conclusion: The Throne, the Seat, the Glory
In the Great Vespers of the Ascension, the Church chants: “You sat down, O Christ, at the right hand of the Father, ascending from the Mount of Olives. You left Your disciples, but You do not leave them orphans; but, as the Lover of mankind, You promise them the Comforter, who will strengthen them.”
The throne of God, upon which human nature is seated in Christ, is not a political metaphor. It is the final ontological reality. And Christian life is, at its core, the anticipated participation in this seating. At every Liturgy, when the priest pronounces in the Anaphora: “and You have raised us up to heaven and have granted us Your Kingdom which is to come” — he liturgically commemorates the Ascension as a present reality in the Eucharistic celebration.
The feast of the Ascension is, therefore, more than the remembrance of an event. It is the festive seating of the Church before the heavenly throne of Christ. It is the affirmation that our nature is already in glory, in the ascended Christ. It is the foundation of our hope, the premise of Pentecost, and the paradigm of the spiritual ascent of every Christian.
You ascended in glory, O Christ our God, granting joy to Your disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit. Through the blessing they were assured that You are the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world.
Bibliographical Notes
Primary patristic sources used:
- Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Sermon 156 (fragmentary) and related passages on Luke 24:50-53. English translation by R. Payne Smith (1859), available at tertullian.org.
- Saint John Chrysostom, In Ascensionem Christi (CPG 4342), in Nathalie Rambault, ed., Jean Chrysostome, Homélies sur la Résurrection, l’Ascension et la Pentecôte, II, Sources Chrétiennes 562 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2013/2014), pp. 148-198. English translation by Dragoljub Garic, Pappas Patristic Institute, 2022.
- Saint John Chrysostom, Homily 1 on the Acts of the Apostles, PG 60, in NPNF1-11, ed. Schaff.
- Saint John Chrysostom, Homily 11 on Ephesians (on Ephesians 4:7-10), PG 62, NPNF1-13.
- Saint Gregory of Nyssa, In Ascensionem Christi (CPG 3178), PG 46, 689 sqq.
- Saint Leo the Great, Sermo 73 and 74 (De Ascensione Domini I-II), CCL 138A, English translation NPNF2-12, ed. Schaff.
- Saint Maximus the Confessor, Questions to Thalassius (CCSG 7, 22), Centuries on Love, and Mystagogia.
- Saint Gregory Palamas, Homily 21 (First Homily on the Ascension), in Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies, ed. Christopher Veniamin (Mount Thabor Publishing, 2014).
- Saint Romanos the Melodist, Kontakion of the Ascension, ed. Maas-Trypanis, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica (Oxford, 1963); English translation by E. Lash, On the Life of Christ (HarperCollins, 1995).
Historical sources (4th century) on Saint Helena and the founding of the church of the Ascension:
- Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine (Vita Constantini), III, 41-43. Critical edition by Friedhelm Winkelmann, GCS Eusebius Werke I/1 (Berlin, 1975); English translation NPNF2-1, ed. Schaff.
- Egeria, Itinerarium Egeriae (Peregrinatio Aetheriae), chs. 31, 35-43 — description of the liturgies at the place of the Ascension. Critical edition SC 296 (Paris: Cerf, 1982).
Iconography:
- Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, 2 vols. (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press).
- Michel Quenot, The Icon: Window on the Kingdom (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press).
Original article from OrtodoxWay. Full reproduction is permitted with indication of source.