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.

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 a detailed account of the first part of the reading from Acts. Today, we continue our detailed look.

But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Verse 1:8 provides a “table of contents” for Acts. The witness “in Jerusalem” is Acts 2 to 7. “Throughout Judea and Samaria” is from chapters 8 to 12, and to “the ends of the earth” from Acts 13 to 28. “The ends of the earth” is an echo of Isa 49:6 (“I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” – quoted explicitly in Acts 13:47)) Both Acts and the Psalms of Solomon, a slightly earlier non-Biblical Jewish writing, apply the phrase “the ends of the earth” to Rome. Acts ends in Rome. And Pss Sol 8:15 calls the Roman general Pompey “him that is from the end of the earth.” Of course, it can simply mean the whole of the world, even beyond Rome.

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. Previously we considered the Acts of the Apostles as a whole, Today we take a high-level view of the unity of the two works of scripture.

Luke begins Acts as he begins his Gospel, with a foreword to his patron Theophilus, reminding him that the “first book” covered the time until Jesus was taken up by God to heaven. The Gospel ends with a brief reference to this incident (Luke 24:51), which was preceded by important teaching given by Jesus to his disciples. So important was this teaching that we have three accounts of it. Luke records it in the Gospel (Luke 24, especially vv. 44–49); he then summarizes it briefly in this introductory part of Acts, and then he covers certain aspects of it once again in the story of the ascension which is the first incident in the main narrative in Acts (1:6–11). The repetition is partly for emphasis, and at the same time it indicates that the period from Easter Sunday to the Ascension is both the conclusion of the earthly ministry of Jesus and the beginning of the work of the church. This period had two important characteristics. It provided evidence that Jesus was alive (1:3), having risen from the dead, and it was the time when Jesus gave his mission orders to the apostles (1:4f.; cf. 1:7f.).

This coming Sunday we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension. The readings are taken from St. Luke’s Gospel and his Acts of the Apostles. Both the first reading and the gospel are accounts of the Ascension, making this event the lynchpin between the two works of St. Luke. Yesterday was an introductory post. Today’s post takes a bird’s eye view of the mission to the world after the Ascension.

Peter was the leading member of the Twelve (Acts 1:13, 15), and after the Resurrection and Ascension was gifted by the Holy Spirit to perform miracles in the name of Jesus (see Acts 3:1-10; 5:1-11, 15; 9:32-35, 36-42) and was the spokesman for the Christian community. In the early days of the Christian Church, it was Peter who was largely responsible for the growth of the community among the Gentile people of Israel, along with Philip. Paul eventually joined the community at Antioch, which subsequently commissioned him and Barnabas to undertake the spread of the gospel to Asia Minor. This missionary venture generally had mixed results among the Jews outside of Israel (the diaspora) but enjoyed success among the Gentiles in cities across Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece.