All of which does not mean that we are wrong when we speak of the ascension as one of the “Glorious Mysteries” of S. Mary.  There we are viewing it in its wide bearing as S. Mary would come to view it in a short while.  When the meaning of the ascension became plain, when under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, S. Mary was able to view her Son as “the One Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,” when she was able to think of the human nature that God had taken from her as permanently enthroned in heaven,—­then would all this be to her creative of intense joy.  We, seeing so clearly what the ascension essentially meant, can think of it as a mystery of intense joy, but as our Lord passed away from sight the passing would for the moment be one last stab of the sword through this so-often wounded heart.

There would be no lingering upon the hill top.  The angel messengers press the lesson that the life before them is a life of eager contest, of energetic action.  Jesus had indeed gone in the clouds of heaven, but they were reminded that there would be a reappearance, a coming-again in the clouds of heaven, and in the meantime there was much to do, work that would require their self-expenditure even unto death.  Back must they go to Jerusalem and there await the opening of the next act of the drama of the Kingdom of God.

As we turn to the Epistles of the New Testament and to the slowly shaping theology of the early Church, we find set out for us the nature of our Lord’s heavenly activity; we see the full meaning of His Incarnation.  The human nature which the Son of God assumed from a pure Virgin, He assumed permanently.  He took it from the tomb on the resurrection morning, he bore it with Him from the Galilean hill to the very presence of uncreated God.  When the Gates lift and admit the Conqueror to heaven, what enters heaven is our nature, what is enthroned at the Right Hand of God is man, forever united to God.  And when we ask, “What is the purpose of this?” The answer is that it is the continual purpose of the incarnation, the purpose of mediatorship between the created and the uncreated, between God and man.  The constant purpose of the incarnation is mediation—­of the need of mediation there is no end.  Our Lord’s work was not finished, though there are those who appear to believe that it was finished, when, as a Galilean Preacher He had taught men of the Father:  nor was it finished when He bought redemption for us on the Cross, and triumphing over death in the resurrection, returned to heaven at the ascension.  There is a very real sense in which we can say that all those acts were the preliminaries of His work, were what made the work possible.  We then mean by His work the age-long work of building the Kingdom of Heaven, and through it bringing souls to the Father.  To insist perhaps over-much:  We are not saved by the memory of what our Lord did, we are saved by what He now does.  We are saved by the present application to us of the work that was wrought in the years of His earthly life.