Ascension Thursday; Pentecost preview

This Great Feast of the Orthodox Church, one of the twelve (Pascha, as the Feast of Feasts, is counted separately from the other 12), commemorates not simply Christ's going up in the clouds, but His final elevation of human nature itself - His Own - to Glory "at the right hand of God the Father." Thus, His Ascension isn't just a footnote to salvation, but its full completion, as far as His earthly ministry and work was concerned.

(Of course, it continued ten days later when the All-Holy Spirit of God, One of the Trinity, "led the disciples into all the Truth," that is, into Christ's Body, from within themselves, as they saw in "tongues as of fire" - nothing less than God's Glory, the same as three saw on Mt. Tabor, and other Prophets had seen throughout the Old Testament Church, and the Forerunner saw when he baptized the Lord [it wasn't really a bird!]. And it has continued throughout the history of the Orthodox Church, Christ's Body, and on behalf of each of us today.)