There would be no doubt of the finality of our Lord’s physical withdrawal this time.  As the group of disciples stood on the hilltop in Galilee and watched the clouds close about Him, they would feel that this was the end of the kind of intercourse to which they had been accustomed.  The past Forty Days would have done much to prepare them for the separation.  Their conception of our Lord’s work as issuing in the establishment of an earthly Kingdom had been swept away; the changed terms of their intercourse with Him in the resurrection state had emphasised the change that had taken place; His teaching during these weeks which was centered on the work of the future in which they were to carry on the mission He had initiated; all these elements prepared them for the definite withdrawal of the ascension.  Nevertheless we can understand the wrench that must have been involved in His actual withdrawal.  We face the dying of some one we love.  We know that it is a matter of weeks; the weeks shorten to days, and we are “prepared” for the death; but what we mean is that the death will not take us by surprise.  However prepared we may be, the pain of parting will be a quite definite pain; there is no way of avoiding that.

We know that there was no way for the disciples to avoid the pain of the going of Jesus.  It was not the same sort of pain that they felt now, as they gazed up from the hill top to the cloud drifting into the distance, as the pain that had been theirs as they hurried trembling and affrighted through the streets of Jerusalem on the afternoon of the Crucifixion.  This pain had no sting of remorse for a duty undone, or of fear for a danger to be met.  It was the calm pain of love in the realisation that the parting is final.

We know that among the group that watched the receding cloud the eyes that would linger longest and would find it hardest to turn away would be those of the Blessed Mother.  Her mission about our Lord during all these past years had been a very characteristically womanly mission, a mission of silence and help and sympathy.  She was with the women who ministered to Him, never obtrusive, never self-assertive; but always ready when need was.  It was the silent service of a great love.  That is the perfection of service.  There are types of service which claim reward or recognition.  We are not unfamiliar in the work of the Kingdom with people who have to be cajoled and petted and made much of because of what they do.  Verily, they have their reward.  But the type we are considering, of which the Blessed Mother is the highest expression, is without thought of self, being wholly lost in the wonder of being permitted to serve God at all.  To be permitted to give one’s time and personal ministry to our Lord in His Kingdom and in His members is so splendid a grace of God that all thought of self is lost in the joy of it.  We know that S. Mary could have had no other thought than the offering of her love in whatever way it was permitted to express itself; and we know that the quality of that love was such that the moment of the ascension would have left her desolate, watching the cloud that veiled Him from her eyes.