By becoming a man Christ annihilated the dichotomy between matter and spirit. In the person of the God-man, a continuum between the divine and the human has been established. The incredible mystery of God's plan is not only to spiritualize the material universe, but to make matter itself divine. He has already done so in the glorified humanity of his Son. The grace bestowed on us by the ascension of Jesus is the divinization of our humanity. Our individuality is totally permeated by the Spirit of God through the grace of the ascension, and more specifically, through the grace of Pentecost. Thus, we too, in Christ, have annihilated the dichotomy between matter and spirit. Our life has become a mysterious interpenetration of material experience, spiritual reality, and the divine presence.

The key to being a Christian is to know Jesus Christ with the whole of our being. How great it is to know his sacred humanity through our senses and to reflect upon it with our reason, to treasure his teaching and example in our imagination and memory, and to imitate him by a life of moral integrity. But this is only the beginning. It is to the transcendent potential in ourselves--to our mind which opens up to unlimited truth, and to our will which reaches out for unlimited love--that Christ addresses himself in the Gospel with particular urgency.

Not only is it essential to know Jesus Christ with the whole of our being; it is also essential to know Jesus Christ in the whole of his being. We must know Christ, first of all, in his sacred humanity and historical reality, and, more precisely, in his passion, which was the culminating point of his life on earth. The essential note of his passion is the emptying of his divinity. We enter into his emptying by accepting the emptying process in our own life, by laying aside our false self, and by living in the presence of God, the source of our being.

We must know Christ, however, not only in his human nature--in his passion and emptying, --but also in his divinity. This is the grace of the resurrection. It is the power to live his risen life. It is the grace not to sin. It is the grace to express his risen life in the face of our own inner poverty, but without ceasing to feel it.

The grace of the ascension offers a still more incredible union, a more entrancing invitation to unbounded life and truth. This is the invitation to enter into the Cosmic Christ-into his divine person, the Word of God, who has always been present in the world. And he has always been present in a saving way because of God's foreknowledge of his incarnation, death, and resurrection. Christ is "the light that enlightens everyone" (John 1:9) - the God who is secretly at work in the most unexpected, surprising, and hidden ways. This is the Christ who has disappeared in his ascension beyond the clouds, not into some geographical location, but into the heart of all creation. In particular, he has penetrated the very depths of our being, and our separateness has become submerged in his divine person, so that now we can act under the influence of his Spirit. Thus, even if we drink a cup of soup or walk down the street, it is Christ living and acting in us, transforming the world from within. This transformation appears in the guise of ordinary things--in the guise of our seemingly insignificant daily routine.

The ascension is Christ's return to the heart of all creation, where he dwells now in his glorified humanity. The mystery of his presence is hidden throughout creation and in every part of it. At some moment of history, which prophecy calls the Last Day, our eyes will be opened, and we will see reality as it is, which we know now only by faith. That faith reveals that Christ, dwelling at the center of all creation and of each individual member of it, is transforming it and bringing it back, in union with himself, into the bosom of the Father. Thus, the eternal glory of the Trinity is achieved through the maximum sharing of the divine life with every creature according to its capacity. This is the fulness of the divine plan, "the mystery hidden for ages in God" (Eph. 3:9).

The fruit of the grace of the ascension is the triumphant faith that believes that God's will is being done no matter what happens. It believes that creation is already glorified, though in a hidden manner, as it awaits the revelation of the sons of God.

The grace of the ascension enables us to perceive the irresistible power of the Spirit transforming everything into Christ, despite any and all appearances to the contrary. In the misery of the ghetto, the battlefield, the concentration camp; in the family torn by dissension; in the loneliness of the orphanage, old-age home, or hospital ward-wherever things seem to be disintegrating into grosser forms of matter and evil--the light of the ascension is burning with irresistible power. This is one of the greatest intuitions of faith. This faith finds Christ, not only in the beauty of nature, art, and human friendship, but also in the malice and injustice of men and in the inexplicable suffering of the innocent. Even there it finds the same infinite love expressing the hunger of God for us, a hunger that he intends to satisfy.

Thus, in Colossians, Paul does not hesitate to cry out with his triumphant faith in the ascension: "Christ is all, and in all" (Col. 3:11)--meaning now, not just in the future. At this moment we too have the grace to see Christ's light shining in our hearts; to feel his absorbing presence within us; and to perceive in every created thing--even in the most disconcerting--the presence of his love, his light, and his glory.

Pentecost also is both an event and a grace. So too are all the feasts of the Liturgical Year. The grace of Christmas is to know him in his humanity. The grace of Epiphany is to know him in his divinity. The grace of Holy Week is to know him in his emptying and dying. The grace of Easter is to know him in his triumph over sin and death. And the grace of the Ascension is to know him in the whole of his being, as the Cosmic Christ. It is to know the glorified Christ, who has passed, not into some geographical location, but into the depths of all creation.

The Cosmic Christ, revealed in the mystery of the Ascension, manifests our deep self and the inner nature of all reality. What is manifested is the living, vibrant Spirit, filling us and all things with boundless life and love. The Spirit is always present, yet always coming to us. That is because the divine actuality becomes present in a new way each time we move to a new level of spiritual awareness. The Spirit has been given; yet he is always waiting to be received so that he can give himself again--and more completely.

On the day of his resurrection, Jesus breathed his Spirit upon his disciples, saying: "Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). On the day of the ascension, forty days later, he "charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father . . . before many days, you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1:4-5).

The Spirit, then, is not given only once. He is an ongoing promise, an endless promise--a promise that is always fulfilled 

and always being fulfilled, because he is infinite and boundless and can never be fully plumbed.

The Spirit is the ultimate promise of the Father. A promise is a free gift. No one can be bound to make a promise. Once a promise is made, however, one is bound. When God binds himself, it is with absolute freedom, absolute fidelity. The Spirit, as a promise, is a gift, not a possession. He is a promise that has been communicated; hence, never to be taken back, since God is infinitely faithful to his promises. Note that the communication is by way of gift, not possession. Like the air we breathe, we can have all that we wish to take into our lungs; but it does not belong to us. If we try to take possession of it--stuff it in a closet for safekeeping--our efforts will be in vain. Air is not made to be possessed, and neither is the Spirit.

The divine Spirit functions in a similar way. He is all gift, but he will not acquiesce to a possessive attitude. He is all ours, as long as we give him away. "The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know when it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). In these words, Jesus explained to Nicodemus and to us that we have no control over him. In fact, it is in giving him away that we manifest that we truly have received him. He is the supreme gift, but supremely himself, supremely free.

The Spirit of God, the promise of the Father, sums up in himself all the promises of Christ. For they all point to him. The incarnation is a promise. The passion and death of Jesus are promises. His resurrection and ascension are each a promise. Pentecost itself, the outpouring of the Spirit, is a promise. All are promises and pledges of the divine Spirit, present and to be received at every moment. He is the last, the greatest, and the completion of all God's promises, the living summary of them all. Faith in him is faith in the whole of revelation. Openness and surrender to his guidance is the continuation of God's revelation in us and through us. It is to be involved in the redemption of the world, in the divinization of the whole universe. To know that Christ is all in all and to know his Spirit, the ongoing promise of the Father--this is the grace of Pentecost.

Between God and us, two extremes meet: He who is everything, and we who are nothing at all. It is the Spirit who makes us one with God and in God, just as the Word is with God and is God--the Word by nature; we by participation and communication. Our Lord prayed for this unity at the Last Supper. Many of his words on that occasion find their fulfillment and ultimate significance in the outpouring of the Spirit into our minds and hearts. Jesus said, "The glory you have given to me, I have given to them, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one" (John 17:22-23).

Thus, we are not just with God in virtue of our baptism and our Christian vocation, we are in God. The Spirit is the gift of God, welling up in the Trinity from the common heart of the Father and the Son. He is the overflow of the divine life into the sacred humanity of Jesus, and then into the rest of us, his members.

When Jesus was talking to the Samaritan woman about the gift of God, he encouraged her to request it of him. He was sitting at the well as he spoke to her of the Spirit. The well is a symbol of what is deepest and most hidden, but which is our greatest potentiality--namely, our capacity to receive the Spirit, who communicates himself to us beyond thought and feeling in the substance of our spirit.

"If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:57-38). John tells us that he was speaking of the Spirit when he said these words. The Spirit is the stream of living water which wells up in those who believe. It is the same Spirit that causes our hearts to rejoice because of the confidence that he inspires in God as Father. Abba, the word that spontaneously wells up in us, sums up our intimacy with God and our awareness of being not just with God, as friend to friend, but in God. We are penetrated by God and penetrating into God, through the mysterious, all-enveloping, all-absorbing, all-embracing Spirit.

Jesus in his priestly prayer for his disciples pleaded "that they may all be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us" (John 17:21). It is the Spirit who causes us to be one in the body of Christ. We have all received the same Spirit, enlivening us, causing us to be in Christ, in the Father, in the Spirit--to be in Christ, not just with him.

We are in God and he is in us, and the unifying force is the Spirit. To live in the Spirit is the fulfillment of every law and commandment, the sum of every duty to each other, and the joy of oneness with everything that is.

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Excerpted from The Heart of the World by Fr. Thomas Keating

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