The Ascension

Forty days after Easter As the Orthodox writers Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky wrote about the Ascension of Jesus, it is the entire process of salvation consummated, birth, death and resurrection all fulfilled in the Ascension. Jesus ascends on his own power from the slopes of Mount Olivet, watched by the Virgin and Apostles, including two angels who frame the Virgin in white while pointing upwards as if to say, “Why do you stand looking into heaven?” With Jesus gone from their midst, it is now time to be about the work of evangelization and conversion among all peoples. Jesus, absorbed into the heavenly realm of his Father, is encased within a dark sphere. This mystical form is called a mandorla and is sometimes shown as a sphere and at others as an almond shape.