Reflection of the Week – 12 May 2026

"Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?". The question is not just curiosity, but a redirection. And in that redirection is the Ascension’s challenge to us.

Posted May 12, 2026 in Faith

Stop looking up: A reflection for Ascension Day

by Clive Conway

"Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?" (Acts 1:11). That’s the question two men in white robes ask the apostles moments after they have watched Jesus’s ascension and are now staring into the sky. The disciples have just witnessed something both shattering and amazing, and their instinct is entirely understandable: to look upward, reach skyward, cling to what is departing in a mix of awe, grief and loss.

Of course, a passer-by arriving at that moment would wonder what they were staring at. But these are no ordinary passers-by, and their question is not simply curiosity, but a redirection. And in that redirection is the Ascension’s challenge to us.

The writer of Luke ends in a similar way, not with loss, but with joy and a sense of commissioning (Luke 24:44–53). Jesus opens the disciples' minds to understand the scriptures, names them as witnesses, and blesses them with outstretched hands before he withdraws from their sight. They return to Jerusalem not bereft, but with great joy. Something has been released into the world, not removed from it.

The reading from Ephesians (1:15–23) reinforces the idea that Christ is not distant, but through the Ascension becomes the animating head of the whole body – not just the Church, but all things. This is both a cosmic claim, and a profoundly earthly one. If Christ is present in all things, then where we are asked to look is not upward but outward – at our neighbours, the strangers we meet, and our suffering world.

The Ascension is not a withdrawal into irrelevance; it is an enthronement of love at the centre of reality. We are not called to pine after an absent Christ, or a reuniting in a different, future realm. Rather, we are called to embody an ever-present Christ – in the pursuit of justice, in the making of peace, in acts of hospitality and compassion.

Stop looking up. Look around. Begin here. Start now.

Image: The fresco of Ascension of Jesus in the side apse of church kostel Svatého Václava in Prague by S. G. Rudl (1900).

Comments

Write comment