And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.

Within a few days after my Mom died in 2016, Leonard and I took a trip out to Montana to visit Glacier National Park.  We had planned the trip before her death and after discussing it, we felt that Mom would want us to continue with our plans.  It was surreal in so many ways, as I look back on the experience of that trip.  Driving from the Great Falls Airport west into the park, the Montana skies were grand and expansive, just as one of the state’s nickname declares – Big Sky Country!  The golden rolling hills which sidelined the highway we travelled were dotted with livestock, hay bales, and serenity.  This was not our first trip out west to Glacier National Park.  We made our first trip there in 1995, just months after my brother died.  So, it easily became a sacred place, and now the synchronicity of having the trip planned before Mom passed, made our going almost a pilgrimage.  We were going to the mountains, unsettled and unsure, yet feeling called there.

The eleven disciples went to Galilee,
to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted

The Gospel today (Mt 28:16-20) describes how the disciples, in the aftermath of Jesus’ death and resurrection are now being called again to the mountain.  Though Jesus had been telling him about his return to the Father, they didn’t know what to expect.  The Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:1-11) gives us more context for their bewilderment as to the meaning of all of this:

“Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons
that the Father has established by his own authority.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
throughout Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.”
When he had said this, as they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going,
suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.
They said, “Men of Galilee,
why are you standing there looking at the sky?

The restoration that they had expected was now transformed into a mysterious promise by Jesus of a Holy Spirit that would come and empower them.  After this, Jesus ascended, a cloud covered him, and they remained there staring up in the sky.  They didn’t want to avert their gaze from the place that they lost sight of the One they loved and followed.  Suddenly gone, they wanted him to stay to remain, just as he had been with them these last three years.  Yet he was gone now and they were sad and confused, even with the promise of newness to come with the Spirit.

Their hearts were holding tightly to that Jesus they had grown to love, know and follow.  And now they were being asked to let go of that Jesus.  Despite the promise of the Holy Spirit, they surely must have wondered just what that ‘letting go’ would mean inasmuch as what this new Holy Spirit would involve?  They stared into the Big Sky of uncertainty and hope.  There was an in-between-ness that was uncomfortable and unsettling, though not simply sad, but perhaps also joyful.  This was another death for them, but one that was already surrounded by a yet intangible new spirit and life.

The Canadian Catholic writer, Ronald Rolheiser, describes the Ascension within the full context of the Paschal Mystery, wherein transformation takes place through the process of suffering and death, moving on to the receiving of new life, spending time grieving the old and adjusting to the new, and finally only after letting the old life go, new spirit is given for the life that is already living.[i]  In this way, we can look at Christ’s life, death, resurrection, ascension and coming of the Holy Spirit as not only the Paschal Mystery of Jesus’ experience, but also as ours.  The Ascension aspect is one that gets overlooked, but indeed, it is one that we probably experience more than we realize.

The Ascension experience is that liminal or in-between space – the BIG SKY – that we look into with wonder and grief, and grapple with the tendency to want to cling to the ‘old’ life and somehow receive the promised new spirit.  As Rolheiser puts it, this is a receiving of the new spirit for the life we are already living.  When we cling to the old spirit, we can effectively block the ascension, i.e., prevent the receiving of new spirit for our life.  This is an important distinction because it means that it is the Spirit that gives new life, and interestingly this new life may very well be the life we are already living; yet we have to let our old life go in order to receive the new reality of our lives.[ii] If we can allow ourselves the big space to grieve our old life and let it go, whether it be the death of loved ones as we have experienced them, the death of our own dreams, or even the death of our wholeness from past trauma or violation, then we can receive the new spirit that will grant the hope that Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (Eph 1:17-23) promises:

May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call,
what are the riches of glory
in his inheritance among the holy ones

The riches of the glory of the inheritance is the new spirit – the Holy Spirit that transforms lives in unimaginable ways because it gives new life in any and all situations. It is a type of stretching open of our lives to more aliveness. This is the Big Sky ascension – the upper room open space that waits and glows. But, we can stifle it.  Just as Jesus tells another disciple, Mary Magdalene, in the garden of his tomb on Easter morning, “Do not cling,” Mary is being invited into her own ascension – the release of her old way of envisioning and seeing Jesus in her life, and letting the ever-new Spirit of Christ help her into the adjustment, the stretching transformation that will grant her NEW life! This is our invitation into ascension as well.

In this transformative process – the Big Sky of the Ascension – our old lives can be surrendered, because what we are letting go of is the old spirit – what we relied upon to animate our lives. Only through the kenotic surrendering can we receive the New spirit, the new aliveness expanding our existence. Our outward circumstances may not change, our histories are not altered, but the New Spirit gives new and greater aliveness that makes the eyes of our hearts enlightened enough to witness the BIG SKY of hope and the riches of glory, which is the inheritance of all the Holy Ones – everyone.

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As we ascended into Glacier National Park in September 2016, the great glaciated Mountains arose in the BIG SKY, and we could feel the spirits of the earth and its wildlife, the spirits of the indigenous people who first named this place as holy, and Mom… she was there also!

[i] Ronald Rolheiser, THE HOLY LONGING: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (Doubleday: 1999), 147.

[ii] Ibid., 148.