This coming Sunday we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension. The first reading for Sunday is taken from the first chapter of Acts of the Apostles. The gospel reading is taken from Luke 24.  Yesterday we considered the account in the Acts of the Apostles in detail. Today we turn our attention to the Gospel account.

From the earliest times in the church, there was a danger of docetism, the heretical belief that Jesus was God behind a thin veneer of humanity: thus his suffering was only play-acting, and the Resurrection was simply a return to a completely spiritual existence with no bodily effect. The Letters of John combated this error (1 John 4:2–3; 2 John 7). The narrative from the Upper Room which precedes our passage stresses that Jesus’ resurrection body is real. The disciples touch him; the marks of the passion are visible in his hands and feet; he eats with the disciples.