Viri Galilaei, quid statis aspicientes in coelum?
Hic Jesus, qui assumptus est a vobis in coelum,
sic veniet, quemadmodum vidistis eum euntem in coelum. Alleluia!
“And so, dearly-beloved, let us rejoice with spiritual joy, and let us with gladness pay God worthy thanks and raise our hearts’ eyes unimpeded to those heights where Christ is. Minds that have heard the call to be uplifted must not be pressed down by earthly affections, they that are fore-ordained to things eternal must not be taken up with the things that perish; they that have entered on the way of Truth must not be entangled in treacherous snares, and the faithful must so take their course through these temporal things as to remember that they are sojourning in the vale of this world, in which, even though they meet with some attractions, they must not sinfully embrace them, but bravely pass through them.”
Sermon of Pope St Leo the Great on the Feast of the Ascension.
“To be a saint, then, is to become by grace what Jesus was by nature, is to reproduce in us, who are His members, that life which He once led in His own Humanity. And this we do first of all in the celebration of the liturgy of which the sacrifice of the Mass is the centre. In the choir, the religious finds himself at all times face to face with Jesus. From one end of the year to the other, the Church unfolds before his eyes the complete cycle of the divine mysteries… it is a source of grace available every day, the grace merited by Jesus when He accomplished the mysteries of His life on earth. If he follows the holy ceremonies with intelligence and love, the religious will not fail to advance in that spiritual transformation which is the end of his vocation, for Jesus will ever be before him as the Model to be imitated, the divine Copy, the “form of our predestination” of which Saint Paul speaks.”
Adapted from Fr Bernadot, O.P.
