Ascension. Four main teachings, 1 very important "Take Home" 5/21/2026

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. I greet you on the day of the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. This combined with the resurrection of our Lord and all the things that happened after his death, the not just the resurrection, but the descent into Hades, the breaking the bars of sin and death, the uh teaching of his disciples during the 40 days that he was still on the earth, his ascension, all those things make it possible for us to be with God in body and in soul and for us to not only be with God in body and soul, but to be perfected and to be in his likeness.

[00:00:43]So, this is very, very important.

[00:00:47]The ascension is the the part of that uh whole economy of God which causes our salvation. I remember when I was a Protestant, it seemed like the only thing that mattered was that Jesus died on the cross. Well, Jesus dying on the cross was part of his ministry, but only a part of it.

[00:01:08]I would say [snorts] that the greater part would be the ascension and the resurrection.

[00:01:14]>> [snorts] >> And so, there's four things about the ascension that I want to tell you relatively quickly, quicker than I would usually do in a sermon because of course we've got another liturgy coming up very soon.

[00:01:25]And the one is that of course, Christ ascended. He ascended in the flesh. He's God and man, and as man, he's perfectly man.

[00:01:36]Now, when he was born, he was, shall we say, imperfectly man. He was a a a before the fall kind of man, Adam before sin, and also he was completely illuminated with the Holy Spirit in his human nature, so that he had no inclination to sin. In that way, he was different than man. But his flesh was still capable of death as is quite obvious since he died on the cross.

[00:02:04]And without him exercising his will to go down into hell or Hades, excuse me, I shouldn't say hell. There's bad translations out there that say hell.

[00:02:14]It's not hell, it's Hades.

[00:02:16]>> [snorts] >> I I always change them whenever I see them.

[00:02:20]That he goes down into Hades and breaks this the bars of sin and the the hold of sin and and and death over us.

[00:02:27]And then of course he is rises up and makes our flesh capable of resurrection.

[00:02:33]But then what if our flesh is capable of resurrection but not of ascension?

[00:02:39]It would be a fool's errand then. So our flesh is capable of resurrection and ascension to God and because Christ ascended in the flesh. There's some beautiful terminology hymnology in the canon especially that talks about Jesus having taken humanity upon his shoulder.

[00:02:58]So he's perfecting humanity by the ascension.

[00:03:03]Now all these things are not realized until the thing that he promised which is the Holy Spirit. And he said that the Holy Spirit would not come until he was no longer with them. Well, clearly he's no longer with them after the ascension because no longer is Christ walking the earth preaching, teaching. He's expecting us to do that. By the way, that's part of the meaning of the parable of the good Samaritan because the Samaritan, Jesus, brings the man to the inn by means of his incarnation.

[00:03:37]And the inn is the church and he says, "Take care of him until I come back."

[00:03:42]Which is the coming back the the second coming. And that's also part of the teaching of the ascension because as as apostles were uh gazing up into the sky and they were rebuked by two angels saying, "Men of Galilee, what are you doing looking up at the sky? The same way in which the you've seen Jesus Christ leave, he's going to come back."

[00:04:04]But then the inference is also that >> [snorts] >> what are you doing looking up at the sky?

[00:04:09]This is the fourth teaching. You must have an active life.

[00:04:13]Just knowing things is useless if you don't act upon your knowledge. It doesn't matter what you know.

[00:04:20]If you don't act upon it, it's useless and it could be even uh to your damnation to know things but not to act upon them.

[00:04:28]Now, I'll tell you the one take home for me of the Ascension and especially when you read the Canon and I advise you to read the Canon as well as stand in the church and listen to the Canon.

[00:04:40]Uh I read the Canon this morning in its entirety and uh besides being here in vigil last night and I understand it better when I read it, to be honest with you, cuz there's stuff going on and there's noise and there's this and there's that and there's words that are not always pronounced exactly right and such stuff like that.

[00:04:57]What the what this Canon really proves to me is that our flesh and our soul are precious and holy to God.

[00:05:07]Not one and not the other is inferior nor superior to the other.

[00:05:14]We are saved body and soul and therefore this is the reason why we're ascetical.

[00:05:20]If you're not ascetical, then you're completely missing the boat.

[00:05:24]I understand people have different abilities to do things, different levels of energy, different abilities to uh digest certain foods, etc., etc., etc. But so much of what we do is be lazy and then we are with our flesh dragging down our soul.

[00:05:43]Then again, our soul thinks of things that are terrible and drags down our flesh. So, they can both drag each other down or they can lift each other up. The way the body lifts up the soul is with ascetical life.

[00:05:58]That's why I'm telling you all these things.

[00:06:01]That's why I'm telling you to do prostrations. That's why I'm telling you to read the scriptures cuz that's an ascetical thing.

[00:06:07]Cuz most of us uh if we didn't read the scriptures, what would we be doing?

[00:06:12]Probably using our thumbs, right?

[00:06:15]That's no good.

[00:06:17]So, the body must be ascetical.

[00:06:22]And the body is holy and good and God saves us body and soul.

[00:06:27]And what a terrible thing it is when we waste our time with something we do with our body or something we do with our soul that does not bring us closer to God. Now, of course, the body can do terrible things and sinful things.

[00:06:41]And of course, those are obviously things that are are too greatly to the detriment of our soul and even to our salvation.

[00:06:50]But then again, the body can also do things such as take its ease, not fast so strictly, not come to vigil because we're tired or because we have so many duties, etc., etc. All that sort of thing.

[00:07:05]So, the body and soul must struggle together. And that's in Ascension more than I think any other feast, it is showing how the body and soul work together. Neither one is superior, neither one is inferior.

[00:07:22]And we will be saved as just as we see Jesus going up into the heavens. That's a prophecy that we're going up into the heavens.

[00:07:30]So, the four things that I think are most important to remember from the teaching of the Ascension would be of course Christ ascended in the body and we in court of of will, too. It's a prophecy that this will happen to us. The promise of the Holy Spirit could now come to come about because he was of course leaving the earth.

[00:07:49]And he will come again as he left.

[00:07:54]That is a teaching that there it will be a second coming.

[00:07:58]And also we must live an active life.

[00:08:00]And then the application of all those things is you must live with effort and with intensity. Without that you have no chance.

[00:08:10]Perhaps people don't like that. You know, sometimes I get comments in videos like they think that I'm being too harsh.

[00:08:16]If you don't live with effort, you have no chance of salvation.

[00:08:20]Now everybody's effort is at a different level, but if you don't live according to what you're capable of doing so that you can go beyond what you're capable of doing, you can't be saved.

[00:08:31]Now uh Father Nicholas asked me a question yesterday and I was really kind of flabbergasted.

[00:08:38]I didn't know what to tell him.

[00:08:40]Uh he said to me, he came in we were a little he was a little bit uh uh down.

[00:08:47]Uh unfortunately one of the problems of being a priest is that you're a human being and therefore you sometimes have feelings that you'd like to not have. You get a little bit down when you see so few people coming to church, things like that. Uh you're tired etc. The physical tiredness is not the hard part. It's the it's the spiritual tiredness. It's that sometimes feeling like you're spitting in the ocean.

[00:09:12]And so he comes to me and says, "Have you told people in catechesis if you emphasize that they should come to the great feast and how important the great feasts are?"

[00:09:19]And I >> [snorts] >> thought, "I think so."

[00:09:23]I mean, I talk to you about coming to the services as a very important thing all the time. I must admit, guilty as charged, I don't think I said last week, "You guys should come to the Ascension vigil because it's so important." I didn't say that. But I've I've talked about the ascetical life of Christianity, I think in every single sermon.

[00:09:46]Every single one.

[00:09:48]And certainly coming to the services is very important.

[00:09:52]And I would say that if you don't change your life to be able to or order your life, organize your life, so that you can come to the services, then uh you're really you're really in danger. Now, I understand people have certain situations that make it impossible for them to come to an evening service, uh etc. I understand that.

[00:10:16]But for the most part, the person who does not come either forgot about it or didn't want to do it or valued something above it.

[00:10:26]Like working overtime or doing this or that, things that are just going to go away and have no permanence. But what you do when you celebrate the services, even though you forget them when you go home, I mean because we don't remember everything with great you know, incredible recall, that is permanence.

[00:10:47]So, of course, here I am preaching to the choir and those who are listening to the choir, cuz you're all here at 6:00 in the morning.

[00:10:55]But this so critically important for uh if a community is to grow and if a if an individual is to grow within that community to have an ascetical emphasis on attending the services.

[00:11:09]Now, I bet you somebody's going to give me some reason and they're going to be mad at me because somehow like, he's judging me because, you know, he doesn't understand how hard it is for me.

[00:11:20]Well, that's just narcissism talking.

[00:11:22]Don't let your narcissism talk.

[00:11:25]Uh I'm not singling out any particular person.

[00:11:29]But I'll tell you, we had 19 people baptized.

[00:11:32]And before that, I think we had another but I think we had 30 people all together baptized throughout the year of the last calendar year from Pascha to Pascha and probably that many the previous year.

[00:11:45]You know, we did not have 60 people in vigil last night.

[00:11:50]So, and uh that's that's sad. That's too bad. But I'm glad that you're here at liturgy.

[00:11:56]Uh I if you were not here at vigil, I would say you should question yourself.

[00:12:01]Why wasn't I here at vigil? Did I have a good reason?

[00:12:04]If you have a good reason, God bless you.

[00:12:06]If you don't have a good reason, well, that's not good. It's not good at all.

[00:12:11]Uh but it it's not something where you should feel like, "Okay, I'm going to get rebuked by Father Seraphim. I'm in trouble, you know? So, I don't want to, you know, talk to him for a couple days until he cools off or something."

[00:12:24]It's not about that.

[00:12:25]It's about that you missed an opportunity for grace.

[00:12:31]God is always giving his grace to us.

[00:12:33]Of course, his grace is not something that can be measured, you know, like you pour water into a a glass.

[00:12:40]And if you move the glass away while the water's pouring, where of course the water spills and it does not go into the glass. It's not really like that, but I think you can think of it in sort of that way that God is trying to give you of himself and uh it's all cumulative.

[00:12:56]So, if you refuse the invitation to go to the supper by not going to vigil, by not saying your prayers, by um using your thumbs instead of reading the Bible, whatever it is, whatever choice you make that's a a bad choice, well, you've lost an opportunity and that that part of your life is over and cannot be recalled because it's passed into history.

[00:13:25]So, it's very critical to have an ascetical way of life. The Ascension teaches us to live ascetically. Now, that's something most people don't understand. Even Orthodox Christians don't understand. And certainly outside of Orthodoxy, there is this idea of asceticism is not allowed not sometimes it's not allowed and usually it's not understood at all.

[00:13:48]So, may God bless us. May God help us to live ascetically and to understand the dignity of the flesh and of the soul.

[00:13:58]And struggle so that we can ascend with our Lord Jesus Christ body and soul, be with the saints, the angels, the most holy Theotokos, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

[00:14:07]God bless you.