The word “ascension” is used in two different senses:
(1) The Resurrection Ascension
At the moment Jesus was raised from the dead he went not back to earth, but to the Father. He ascended to the Father, and it is from there that he appeared to the disciples. (Just as his Resurrection was not witnessed by anyone, neither was this Ascension.)
(2) The End of the Special Appearances
Jesus, after his Resurrection/Ascension was no longer limited by time and space. He was and is present to his followers even more closely than before. In the days after his Resurrection/Ascension, Jesus manifested himself to the disciples at various times and places in an extraordinary, visible way.
At some point, these special appearances came to an end. Luke dramatizes the end of these extraordinary visible appearances by describing Christ visibly ascending to heaven.
Actually, Christians are used to connecting the Ascension with the Resurrection. The Nicene Creed says: “(He) suffered, died and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”
In some diocese, the Feast of the Ascension is celebrated today.
(Many people may not be familiar with this Scriptures passage – it is not read at any Sunday or weekday Mass.) On his way home from his final missionary journey, Paul spends a week at Troas, a coastal city in what is today northwest Turkey. He is apparently presiding at a Sunday Eucharist. (It is probably a Saturday evening – by Jewish reckoning, that is when Sunday begins.)
”On the first day of the week when we gathered to break bread, Paul spoke to them because he was going to leave on the next day, and he kept on speaking until midnight.“There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were gathered, and a young man named Eutychus who was sitting on the window sill was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. Once overcome by sleep he fell down from the third story and when he was picked up, he was dead.
“Paul went down, threw himself upon him and said as he embraced him, “Don’t be alarmed; there is life in him.” Then he returned upstairs, broke the bread, and ate; after a long conversation that lasted until daybreak, he departed. And they took the boy away alive and were immeasurably comforted.” (Acts 20:7-12)
This is a fascinating story, filled with graphic details – the oil lamps, Paul talking “on and on,” the boy sitting on a window sill, falling from “the third story.”
Luke clearly sees the boy as really dead. When Paul says “there is life in him,” this is the miraculous effect of Paul taking the boy in his arms. It is another example of the Risen Lord’s power over death.