​A closer look at Ascension

​A closer look at Ascension with Rev. Bridgette Siepker

Report by John-Peter Gernaat

​The festivals of Ascension and Whitsun represent Christ uniting himself further with the earth and with human beings. Christ has become active in the realm of the life forces. When we can enter into the realm of the life forces, we can unite with Christ in this realm.

On Holy Saturday, Christ was able to free the souls of human beings who had lost the ability to ascend to the spiritual world after death. Since that event, human souls can again ascend into the spiritual world.

Christ is more present in the Earth today, so that we can experience the spiritual world more and more while on earth in a physical incarnation. At first, when human beings began to incarnate on earth and became conscious in wakefulness, the separation from the spiritual world was strongly experienced. We know that in the Ancient Indian Cultural Epoch the great desire of humanity was for a return to the spiritual world and not to experience earthly incarnation. But the evolution for consciousness required the human being to become more separated from the spiritual world until a point where it had become difficult for some to ascend again to the spiritual world after death. Now Christ has brought the kingdom of heaven to earth.

Let us look at a plant and use it as an imagination. When a seed sprouts a part of the plant reaches for the light and continues to elevate itself above the earth. At the same time another part of the plant anchors the plant in the dark earth. The purpose of the plant is so that a blossom can form and from the blossom a seed can be produced. Looking at a blossom, we see firstly the bud protected by the calyx. The sepals of the calyx open to hold the petals of the blossom. Deep within the centre of the blossom is an orb that is part of the female organ. This orb sits at the heart of the chalice that is the flower. Around the orb the stamens grow from which golden pollen is released. We can picture the orb surrounded by a crown of gold. The orb is earthly while the pollen is of the sun and rises into the air born by wind. Neither the orb, nor the pollen is the seed. Only when the two unite is a seed formed.

The flower has a gesture of offering, waiting to receive. The pollen and the orb meet. What happens in the spaces between? After fertilisation the orb develops into a fruit that bears the seed.

How is this in us? We can offer ourselves; we can become open and receive. What develops in us as a seed is unlike the seed of the plant. The seed of the plant perpetuates the past, a new plant like its parent plant. The seed is us does not perpetuate the past but rather develop something new. We develop fruits for our future growth.

A story was told to the children which is an apocryphal story of Thomas. Christ sent Thomas to India to build a palace for the King of India. The King gave Thomas a large sum of money and then departed on a journey of two years. During the King’s absence Thomas visited the people of India and helped them in their need. As Thomas helped the people the money given to him by the King decreased. When the King returned the money had run out. The King expected to see a palace built for him by Thomas, but when Thomas could show him nothing, he threw Thomas in jail. The King’s brother died and when he reached heaven he was told that he could select where he wished to live. He found a beautiful palace and said that he would live there. God said to the brother that this palace was already assigned to his brother. God allows the King’s brother to return to earth to ask the King if may live in his (heavenly) palace with him. The brother frees Thomas and tells his brother, the King, of the palace that awaited him in heaven, built for him by Thomas.

This is a picture of the fruits we create on earth through the work we do.

Ascension may also be imagined as a marriage – we can unite with Christ and overcome the earthly world in life if and when we can live out of the spiritual world around us..

Emil Bock includes a poem by Novalis in his book The Three Years as a prayer for Ascension:

In heavy clouds let Him be drawn
And so let Him be downward borne.
In cooling streams let Him be sent,
In flames of fire blaze His descent,
In air and essence, sound and dew
To permeate our whole Earth through.