Quick Reference
Date: Sunday, 17 May 2026
Season: Easter, Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
One-sentence theme:
The Ascension, from the beginning, has been less the feast of a going and more the feast of a commissioning.
A Feast That Looks Away From Itself
The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is one of the oldest feasts in the Christian calendar – attested by the late fourth century, and likely celebrated informally well before that. It falls forty days after Easter, on a Thursday, though many countries now transfer it to the following Sunday. From the beginning, the feast was less about describing an event and more about marking a threshold: the resurrection appearances are over, the visible presence of Jesus among his disciples has ended, and something new is beginning.
What is remarkable about this feast is how little it dwells on the event itself.
Read the first reading carefully. A cloud. A few lines. Two men in white redirecting the disciples’ gaze. The ascension happens almost in passing – and then immediately, insistently, the readings turn toward what comes next. The commission. The promise. The sending.
This is not an accident. The Ascension, from the beginning, has been less the feast of a going and more the feast of a commissioning. Less about what Christ did and more about what that moment does to the community left standing on the hillside.
We do not celebrate the event. We celebrate what the event calls us into.
Where We Are in the Journey
If you have been walking with us through the Easter season, you will recognise this moment.
We began at 2 nd Easter with hearing – faith comes from what is heard. We moved through sight, lips, heart, shoulders. And today we arrive at hands.
These are the senses through which we recognise the risen Christ – and through which, the readings keep insisting, the risen Christ continues to be present in the world. Not in a cloud. Not on a hillside in Galilee. But in the hands that serve, offer, receive, and release.
Next Sunday is Pentecost. We are almost at the end of this journey from Easter to the feast of the Spirit – and the hands are the penultimate stop. The sense through which everything we have received becomes something we can give.
The Born to Recognise series continues next week with the final movement: feet.
An Honest Moment
The Great Commission in Matthew’s Gospel has an order.
Go. Make disciples. Baptise. Teach.
It begins with going – with crossing a threshold, with movement toward rather than waiting for. It begins with relationship, with accompaniment, with the slow and patient work of walking alongside someone until the faith becomes their own. Only then the sacrament. Only then the teaching of commands.
We know, if we are honest, that we do not always live this order.
Many of us were baptised before we were disciples. Many of us were taught the commands before we understood why they mattered. Many of us have sat in pews or stood at altars in communities where the sacramental life ran smoothly and the work of discipleship was quietly assumed to be happening somewhere – in families, in schools, in the space between one Sunday and the next.
We are not alone in this. The disciples on the hillside were already reaching for the wrong question – Lord, is this the time? – before the cloud had even arrived.
The feast of the Ascension is an invitation to stand in that honesty without being paralysed by it. To ask, together, not who is to blame but where are we – and to ask it with the same tenderness we would offer anyone standing on a hillside, neck craned upward, genuinely unsure which direction to turn next.
Where are we, in our faith communities, when we read this commission?
Are we the community that begins with going – with the patient, costly, unhurried work of walking alongside? Or are we still, in some ways, beginning with the sacrament and hoping the discipleship follows?
Are we willing to sit with that question without rushing to answer it?
The angels did not shame the disciples for looking at the sky. They simply pointed them back toward the earth – toward Jerusalem, toward the upper room, toward the ten days of waiting that would become Pentecost.
This same Jesus will come back.
But in the meantime – there is work. There are hands. There is a world that will not be reached by anyone standing still.
This Week
The blessing of the hands is not a religious gesture reserved for ordinations and healings.
It is the recognition that the same hands that made your breakfast this morning are the hands through which the fullness of Christ moves in the world. That the ordinary and the sacred do not live in different registers – they meet, at the same temperature, in the hollow of the same palm.
This week, pay attention to your hands.
Not as a spiritual exercise. Just as a noticing. What do they touch? What do they offer? What do they hold, and what do they release?
And when you find yourself reaching for the wrong question – when will this get easier, when will things change, when will the kingdom finally come – remember the two men in white.
Why are you standing here?
The commission is already given. The power is already promised. The hands already know what to do.
Go Deeper This Week
Why the Angels Said Move Along A close reading of all four readings for this Sunday – including what the Hebrew word for clapping hands actually means, why Matthew doesn’t bother narrating the ascension at all, and what Paul was really praying for when he asked for the eyes of the heart to be opened. For those who want to sit longer with the text before or after Sunday. Includes Introduction to the Liturgy of the Word.
These Hands, Ordinary and Holy A guided somatic practice for after Communion – or for any quiet moment this week. It begins with your feet on the floor and ends with your hands open. It takes about ten minutes, and it asks very little of you except to notice. If your mind wanders, that’s acknowledged. You are not the only one.
Five Prayers for Open Hands The Prayer of the Faithful for this Sunday – five intentions for the Church, the community, and ourselves. For presiders preparing the liturgy, and for anyone who wants to carry these prayers into the week.
Next Sunday: Pentecost One more week. One more sense. We arrive at feet – and at the fire.
