The Ascension is worth celebrating in its own right, but it also acts as a prelude to another feast, Pentecost. John’s Gospel in particular is insistent that without the Ascension there can be no Pentecost (see John 7:39, 16:7). As such, Ascension is a sort of liminal time when, on the one hand, we celebrate everything that the Ascension means for us* and on the other anticipate Pentecost. The collect for this week tries to strike that balance.

O GOD the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

I’ll say up front that this isn’t my favourite collect, because it looks a bit like we’re trying to re-enact the experience of the liminal time in between the first Ascension day and Pentecost. We do not need to pray to God as though he might leave us comfortless, without the Holy Spirit. Though we celebrate it especially at Pentecost, we can rejoice that God has already sent the Spirit.**

Nonetheless, we can pray that God would continue the ministry of his Spirit to us and ask that we would see the Spirit working among us in greater measure than we presently see. In the prayer book we pray twice daily that God would not take his Holy Spirit from us. We would be truly comfortless if he did.

Either side of the request, however, we focus on Christ, and it’s here that we see the link between Ascension and Pentecost. It’s because Jesus is exalted to God’s right hand that he is able to pour out the Holy Spirit on us. Once again, as we speak of his ‘great triumph’ we rejoice in all the Ascension achieves for us.

But as we look to the end of the prayer we see that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to exalt us to where Jesus is. He is sent to help us follow Jesus, not only in that we obey his teaching, but also that we share in his destiny. Jesus has gone before us – he has sent his Spirit to empower us to follow after.

*I wrote a bit about what the Ascension means for Christ as King in my previous post. There is also buckets you can say about the Ascension and Christ as High Priest.

** There is a sense in which part of the Biblical understanding of memory is that we try to enter into the holy mysteries. Memory in Scripture isn’t simply calling things to mind, it’s making past things present so that we can participate in them. Often this does look like reenactment (think of the Passover meal, or the Booths that Israelites lived in during the Feast of Booths). So I’m not absolutely against a sort of reenactment. I just think this collect takes it a bit too far.