Ascension Sunday 2022, Who Is Living Life?

Ninetta Sombart

 Ascension

John 16:22–33 

"So you have to suffer pain now. But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy, and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart that your joy may be fulfilled. 

"All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death." 

Then Jesus' disciples said, "Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God." 

Jesus answered, "Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me. 

"All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world."

Ascension

May 29, 2022

John 16:24–33 

All creatures in rivers, lakes, and seas are surrounded by water; water fills the spaces between them. All the cells of our own bodies are bathed in fluid that fills the spaces between them. The water of life flows within us. 

On Ascension Day, Christ assumed a new form, a new kind of body. He became an in-between. 

He is in-between the physical material world and the living weaving world of life; in-between the life in us and the inner world of our souls; in-between our souls and the objective world of the spirit; in-between humanity and God. 

Rilke senses this:

I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it, then?

Is it the things themselves,

or something waiting inside them….

Who lives it then? God, are you the one

who is living life?*

 

Bamberg

Since His Ascension, Christ is like a super-sensible sea in which we live. He surrounds us. And He is inside us. 

He is present in spaces, in pauses, in moments of stillness. He is there, in the space between our thoughts and our feelings, in-between our urges and our actions; he is in the core of our being, our heart, and in-between, among us. “Where two or more gathered in my name, there I am in their midst” (Matthew 18:20).

 He is our sea within and a sea without. “Pray, “he says, “connect with me, from the center of your heart, and life will be given to your heart…Despite fear and hardship, accept my sea of courage, for I have overcome the world” (John 16: 24, 33). 

We are now living in Christ’s new life. His light, his life, and his love are flooding the world, flooding us. We are the cells of his new body. 

 

*Rilke, “And Yet Though We Strain” in Book of Hours, Barrows and Macy, p. 113.

 www.thechristiancommunity.org.

 

Ascension 2021, Pull You Out of the Sky

 

Ascension

John 16:22-33

 

"So you have to suffer pain now. But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy, and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart that your joy may be fulfilled.

Stephen B. Whately

"All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death."

Then Jesus' disciples said, "Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God."

Jesus answered, "Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

"All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world."

 

Ascension

Sunday, May 16, 2021

John 16:24-33

 

The petals of the blossoms begin to drop. The vision of loveliness falls away. Yet deep at the blossoms' base, fruit is forming, seeds of a new life. It will be a while before they are ripe. But they are there.

Stephen B. Whately

During the forty days of the time after His Resurrection, Christ continued to walk with His disciples. They could see Him in His otherwise transparent Resurrection body. Their deep love for Him, aided by their sorrow and suffering at His death, had opened their souls' eye. Through seeing Him after His death, they knew that the human spirit lives on after death.

But on the fortieth day, at His Ascension, He dies to them again. Their spirit sight cannot follow Him as He is elevated into yet another form, so their vision clouds over. They experience once again losing Him, this time in an indescribable depth of sorrow.

Sorrow and grief serve to deepen the soul. During the ten days after His Ascension, the disciples cocoon themselves together in the upper room. They remember that He said, "Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart (Jn. 16:24)."  So they pray. They go over all their memories of all they had experienced with Him. They remembered that He said, "The hour is coming when I will speak to you, openly and unveiled so that you can grasp it in full knowing consciousness (John 16:25)."

Although their soul's eye can no longer see Him, their prayers and sorrow, and memories are molding their souls. Their interior awareness is deepening. "Do you now feel my power in your heart?" He asks. "Take courage (Jn 16:31, 33)."

Rilke captures something of the mood of Ascension:

Laudario of Sant'Agnese

In deep nights I dig for you like treasure.

For all I have seen

that clutters the surface of my world

is poor and paltry substitute

for the beauty of you

that has not happened yet.

…Reaching, these hands would pull you out of the sky

as if you had shattered there,

…What is this I feel falling now,

falling on this parched earth,

softly,

like a spring rain?*

 

Christ's disciples are gestating. A new capacity is forming within them. It will be a little while until it makes itself known. But it is coming.

* Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours, Barrows and Macy, p. 124.

 

 www.thechristiancommunity.org

 

 

 

 

 

Ascension II, Seed-Force

Ascension

John 16:22-33

William Blake 

So you have to suffer pain now. But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy, and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

  

Ascension II

May 27, 2020

John 16:24-33

Jan de Kok

The blossom opens itself to the sunlit air. In doing so, its beauty and fragrance expand outward. It sends out its pollen and in turn it receives the warm impregnating power from without. Through this fertilization, it becomes fruitful. At its core, seeds of new life begin to form.

The deepest core of our humanness lies in our heart. As we open our heart, we can stream forth the fragrant beauty of our gratitude for all that we have received. Through opening in gratitude, we continue to receive what we need for our future existence. We receive from the future the force that engenders new life, a force that enters and settles into our inmost core.

Christ’s love is that impregnating power for new life that fertilizes our open, thankful hearts. He is the gentle fire of love, creative of being. His power engenders in us new, future life. His love in our hearts is the seed-force for a new earth.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

Ascension 2020, Embrace What Is

Ascension, around 1030, Codex Aureus

Ascension

John 16:22-33

So you have to suffer pain now. But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy, and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Ascension, Ninetta Sombart 

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension

May 24, 2020

John 16: 22–33

Contemporary Resurrection Icon

At night we may be troubled with bad dreams. But in the morning, we rise into our day-waking consciousness.  Our awareness overcomes the dream state and we understand that what troubled us was only a dream.

Our earthly lives can have something of the quality of a dream. We may be troubled by an occasional or even continuing ‘nightmare’ situation. But we can make efforts to awaken, to rise beyond even our ordinary dream-like day-consciousness.

Christ lived the nightmare. He suffered and died. He descended into hell. He rose on the third day. And then at His Ascension, he rose even further—and descended even deeper. For at His Ascension, His loving consciousness, His Life, spread out over the whole world. The Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield said, “The unawakened mind tends to make war on the way things are.” Christ the Awakener has aligned Himself with the world, in loving acceptance of what is. That is the first step toward transforming the way things are into the way they can be. 

Ascension, Sombart

In our moments of earnest prayer, we rise toward Christ, who stands embracing the world with His peace. “Pray from the heart and it will be given to your heart,” He says. “Feel my power in your heart….so that you may find peace.”(John 16:1, 31, and 33) Only by awakening to a higher level of awareness can we, like Christ, embrace what is, in love, and with courage. With Him we can recognize that our own lives are enmeshed ultimately with the life of the whole world; and that only through Christ’s power of transformation can the nightmare be overcome.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

Ascension Thursday 2020, Rising Like Incense

Ascension

John 16:22-33

So you have to suffer pain now. But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy, and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this world.

Stephen B. Whatley

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension

May 21, 2020

John 16: 24-33

Observe a rosebush over time, and you will see how its leaves appear with

rhythmic frequency—one set, a pause for the rise of the stem, the next leaf, another rise. The leaves appear as pulses of the rose’s life, as beats of the heart of its life, ascending heavenward.

Our prayer life is like that. Prayer creates a living form in the garden of God. Christ advises us to pray from the heart. We can imagine that praying from the heart creates a kind of rose tree in His garden. As we pray, we are regularly sending out the leaves on this spiritual rose tree. As we pray, the stems rise higher. As we pray, Christ and his angels guide and tend and nurture what we create, drawing us upward.

       

Like the rosebush, sooner or later, the intervals between the leaves become shorter, the leaves more compressed. The time of transition, of the great change, is near. Christ knows how it is. “In this world, you will have great fear and hardship.”

Charles Andrade

But as we continue praying, straining to keep on rising, ascending, struggling to transform, we can also hear His words echoing: "Take courage. Do you now feel my power in your heart? Take heart."

And as we labor through the transition, something new begins to happen. Amid the deepest trials, the heart blooms. The roses of peace appear, opening to the light of the Spirit Sun. And Christ, the Spirit Sun, in turn, sends His encouragement: “All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

And in the light of his encouragement, our hearts blossom forth roses of peace, their fragrance rising like incense to fill the atmosphere around us.